Defying Gravityhttp://www.republibot.com/taxonomy/term/799/all
enIf Defying Gravity Hadn't Been Cancelled, What Would Have Happened Next? http://www.republibot.com/content/if-defying-gravity-hadnt-been-cancelled-what-would-have-happened-next
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, July 17, 2011 - 00:00</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 11/18/09</p>
<p>As many of you know, we here at Republibot have been pretty steadfast in our coverage of the sadly departed “Defying Gravity” series, which was - alas - dead before it ever even hit the air. A lot of you have emailed or posted in comments, wondering what would have happened next in the story, or asking how to contact the producers, so you can ask ‘em. </p>
<p>Well, now we know!</p>
<p>James Parriott, the series creator gave a detailed interview over on Clique clack, in which he answered many, many, many of our questions about the show. It’s sort of fun to read over it and see what we guessed right and what we got wrong, but, of course, it’s also bittersweet because we’ll never get to see it unfold. And of course he doesn’t reveal the ending. Let’s take a look, shall we? </p>
<p>First of all: Many of us called it right on Nadia’s character: She was born a hermaphrodite, and chose “Female” around age 10, but she’s haunted by the life she didn’t get, and of course she’d have gradually become male in the second season of the show. Ugh. Frankly, if there’s one aspect of the show that I *didn’t* want to see, it’s this. The whole thing really icked me out.</p>
<p>Donner and Zoe would, of course, provide the emotional and romantic core of the show, and despite his having a vasectomy and her having an emergency hysterectomy, they’d end up having a kid during the course of the mission. In fact, that’s kind of neat: We’ve never seen anyone attempt that on an SF show before. Obviously, Goss would have dropped a kidney in anger over that one. </p>
<p>We don’t get any significant answers about Wassenfelder, though we are told that he didn’t have any hallucinations since they hadn’t figured out his character well enough to guess what he’d hallucinate about.</p>
<p>Arnell Poe would have, as nearly all of us guessed, lost a leg in training, which is how they’d have brought Zoe back in to the program. Later, he, AJ, Trevor the Reporter, and Claire, would start a cabal to get the real information about the Antares mission out to the public.</p>
<p>We’re also not given any meaningful explanations for Jen - we don’t know why she didn’t hallucinate, but it’s somehow tied up with her fears of abandonment. In season 2, she’d have had to kill her bunny.</p>
<p>Eve has probably the most unexpected story of the show - she’s been having flashbacks of mars, where Ted is yelling, and eventually she realizes the logo on his helmet is “Antares,” so it’s not a flashback at all, but a flash forward! Her and Rollie end up going to Mars and meeting the Antares crew there! </p>
<p>Goss would eventually have a degree of redemption.</p>
<p>Sharon and Walker - the astronauts abandoned on Mars ten years earlier - survived for weeks or maybe even months on the planet afterwards. (How does this jibe with Eve’s mention that “They never would have made it to the lander”, though?) There was talk about having the two still alive on Mars when the Antares got there, in season 3. Probably half of season 3 would have taken place on Mars, or in orbit around it.</p>
<p>Season 2, we can surmise, would have been all about Mercury. </p>
<p>You can read the whole article online here <a href="http://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/10/29/how-defying-gravity-would-have-progressed-straight-from-the-creator/">http://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/10/29/how-defying-gravity-would-have-...</a> and it’s pretty fascinating. There’s also some discussion of why the show wasn’t promoted better, and whether or not getting labeled “Grey’s Anatomy In Space” was a good thing or a bad thing. </p>
<p>Check it out, and if you’ve got any friends who like the show, be sure to tell them!</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/doomed-shows">Doomed Shows</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/-rest-story">The Rest Of The Story</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:00:00 +0000Republibot 3.01063 at http://www.republibot.comWhy Some Shows are Dead Before they Hit the Airhttp://www.republibot.com/content/why-some-shows-are-dead-they-hit-air
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 00:00</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 10/29/09</p>
<p>The more-or-less cancellation of “Defying Gravity,” as well as the recent end of “Kings” has brought up some discussion of why the networks put on shows, and then don’t promote them, why some shows seem orphaned before they hit the air, and why the premature cancellation of SF programming is the norm, and not the exception. Some of you already know this, but for those who don’t, this is probably as good a time as any to explain some of the basic facts of life of Network Politics:</p>
<p>Some shows are born to die.</p>
<p>There’s a million different reasons - sabotaging someone else’s career to promote your own, a flurry of unexpected notoriety, a contractual obligation, economic problems - you name it. As a side-effect of the weird, Byzantine deals under which TV shows are made in the first place, you get all kinds of weird blowback. For instance, Matt Groening created The Simpsons, Fox’s first, and most enduring hit. As part of his contract with the network, he had a “Development Deal” which allowed him to develop other shows for the network, with a guarantee that they’d make at least one of them. Despite the fact that Groening has made planets worth of money for Fox, he signed on to that network in it’s wild west days, when they were much less ‘hands on’ than they are now, and while Simpsons is still unquestionably the biggest hit ever, the Studio Suits can’t really take credit for it, since it was running when they got there, and - as it’s under a late-80s contract - it’s still effectively autonomous, relative to the modern shows. Groening and his people have cranked out somewhere around 35 concepts for TV shows, all of which Fox rejected because either they were legitimately half-assed (A live-action Krusty the Klown show), or because they were good pitches (A Simpsons spinoff featuring the supporting characters, but not the Simpsons themselves) simply didn’t want a guy they couldn’t really control to have any more mojo around the studio.</p>
<p>They were obliged to make *one* of them, however, before the deal expired, and thus Futurama was born. Rumor - unsubstantiated - has it that they deliberately picked the weakest concept pitched, knowing it would fail inexpensively, thus saving themselves years of production costs, and also saving them paying Groening a fine. The show ended up being a cult hit, dying, coming back, dying, coming back again, but assuming any of this well-known story is true, the show was greenlit without any intention of it getting past the initial order of 13 episodes.</p>
<p>Another example is “Crusade,” the failed spinoff to Babylon 5. Now, B5 had tolerable ratings, and a great reputation, and a lot of buzz, but, owing to the changing syndicated TV landscape, it got cancelled prematurely. TNT quickly snapped up the show for cable, giving them a year to wrap up their storyline. What TNT *really* wanted, though, was a Star Trek-styled hit that would run indefinitely, which is why they gobbled up B5. Joe Straczynski refused to sell out his vision of a show with a firm beginning, middle, and end, however, and insisted the show had to conclude at episode 110, as he’d always planned. However, he promised them a shiny new spinoff - Crusade - which would pick up the story and run with it in exciting new ways, and *That* one was less arc-driven. It could run for three years, for seven, you know, whatever the Network wanted. </p>
<p>Season 5 of B5 ended up being comparatively lame, and is generally everyone’s least favorite. The ratings were weak. TNT realized they’d bought an old dog on its last trick, but - here’s the deal - they were contractually obligated to produce and run a spinoff to a show that no one bothered to watch on their network in the first place. What do they do? Opt out of the contract? No, that would be more expensive than just making the damn show. Instead, they made 13 episodes, then cancelled it, citing “Low ratings.” They still took a bath, but less of one than if they’d been more upfront and said “We just don’t want it anymore.”</p>
<p>In the case of “Kings,” it appears NBC was looking for a new, weird, Lost-sized hit to replace ER. They jumped at Kings, despite it’s $4million/episode budget (Cheap, compared to ER), but then someone decided to milk ER for another half-season’s worth of “Goodbye” episodes, so King’s intended slot suddenly wasn’t available. By this point, the show was shaping up to be much weirder than NBC had anticipated, and by the time the first 13 episodes had aired, they were all pretty much embarrassed by the show. Dead before it hit the air.</p>
<p>A similar story is told of “Firefly.” Fox wanted a new Whedon show, since he was the golden boy with “Buffy” and “Angel” on the air. They’d signed a development deal with him, just like they had with Groening. He turned in “Firefly.” They didn’t *want* firefly, they wanted another Buffy spinoff, but they were obliged to produce it just the same. Even so, the show was dead before it hit the air.</p>
<p>The classical example, however, is the Original Battlestar Galactica (1978/79):</p>
<p>Now, as you all know, Science Fiction on TV hit a peak in the mid/late 1960s, when you had Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel, The Outer Limits, and various Spy-Fi shows all running more-or-less concurrently (And in the UK: The Prisoner and Dr. Who). This boom went bust around 1968 or 1969, however, and in the decade following, not a *single* American SF show went more than one season. Most didn’t even get that far.</p>
<p>Around 1976, Glenn Larson pitched a show to ABC called “Adam’s Ark,” which the network recognized was pretty half-assed, and they said “No.” In 1977, Star Wars hit, and became the biggest blah blah blah blah you know the drill. ABC wanted a piece of this actions, so they started casting around for an SF show, and they called Larson up. “Well, sure, you can have it, but I’ve continued to tinker with it, and now it’s called ‘Battlestar Galactica’” The network listened to his new pitch, realized it was even *more* half-assed than the original, and gleefully snapped up the show immediately.</p>
<p>“Why would they want a half-assed show,” you ask? </p>
<p>Well, remember: SF was expensive to produce, and not terribly rewarding financially: Every SF show made from 1969 to 1977 had bombed. Lots of development costs, no profits. ABC decided to put this to work for them. They were convinced the “SF Boom” would be short-lived. Six months, and everyone was gonna’ want movies about killer sharks and over-sexed hair stylists again. All they needed to do was show the public the candy they wanted right now, and get rid of it by the time their interest waned. Ergo: they decided to sign and run a show that would be highly visible, attract a lot of people, and then crash-and-burn as quickly as possible. “Galactica” appeared to be just such a show.</p>
<p>“But why would they…”</p>
<p>Tut, tut, bear with me here for a minute: They saw the show as a loss leader - the thing that would get people ‘in the store,’ so to speak. Come for the show, stay for the steaks. The concept was that they’d promote the hell out of Galactica to get people to tune in for it, and in the process they’d see some of ABC’s new high-profile sitcoms like “Up All Night” and “Angie,” which would be positioned immediately before and after it. </p>
<p>“Galactica” was initially commissioned as a series of “Movies of the Week” - three or four, airing through the course of the season (And this probably would have been the best format for it, really) - but based on the massive public interest their announcement generated, they ultimately decided to make it a weekly series, bumping up production from 8 hours to 22 hours. No big deal, they didn’t figure half of that would ever be made. They were sure with such a goofy-assed concept, the thing would be dead in 8 weeks, 13 tops.</p>
<p>It was a hit!</p>
<p>Oh, they were screwed, unbelievably screwed. As a loss leader, they figured they could eat six or eight million bucks over the course of the season, since they’d make that back in advertising on their cheap, highly-successful sitcoms like Mork &amp; Mindy and Happy Days. But remember, a million bucks back in 1978 equals $3,302,929.45 today! With a million-dollar-per-episode budget, the show was looking to eat up something like $67 MILLION dollars in the course of a year! They simply couldn’t afford success like that! Added to which, they weren’t making any money: All their new sitcoms had quickly bombed. Only “Angie” would make it to a second season. Even massive hits like “Mork and Mindy” massively faltered around the time Galactica appeared, and never recovered.</p>
<p>As “Fantastic Films” reported in 1981, ABC had “Angered the television gods, and would pay.”</p>
<p>What could they do? They couldn’t just cancel a hit, but they couldn’t afford to keep it on, so, in the worst traditions of corrupt politicos who don’t want the votes from the ghetto to count, they gerrymandered. They moved Galactica all over the schedule, pre-empted it like crazy, reran episodes endlessly. The audience wanted to watch it, but they couldn’t find it. How many times was it jerked around on the schedule? I don’t know, but I *do* know the only shows in the entire history of TV that have been shuffled around more than Galactica are WKRP in Cincinnati and 3rd Rock from the Sun. </p>
<p>Even so, it only sank to 22nd in the ratings, which isn’t terrible, even in 1979. Low enough to cancel it, however. But even this worked against them: Their new shows having failed, their old shows failing, and a high-profile success that damn near bankrupted them - to this day, it’s still a bit unclear how much money Galactica ate up. Adjusting for inflation, it’s certainly no less than $67 million, but there’s a lot of front-end development costs, advertising, and stuff like that. Reasonable estimates - adjusted for inflation - are in the range of $100 million, and I’ve seen some that run as high as $140 million. As a result of this debacle, ABC fell from it’s decade-long reign as the highest rated network to third place, and, on top of all that, they got a lot of bad press from cancelling the show. Remember that kid who killed himself when they announced it wasn’t coming back? Remember how Larson - a very successful producer in those days - complained about them cancelling a show with ratings that clearly justified a second season, though probably at a reduced budget? Remember the fan write-in campaigns? </p>
<p>Write-in Campaigns were new, effectively invented by Harlan Ellison in the bid to save Trek in the late sixties. Nowadays, a character can’t change haircuts without a petition complaining to the broadcaster, but back then such things were few and far between, and kind of scary for the suits, who like telling the audience what to do, and not the other way around.</p>
<p>Another plan was hatched: We’ll bring Galactica back in an even-more-half-assed fashion. This was Galactica: 1980. The show was intended (By the network) with one thing in mind: To be such an embarrassment that no one could say “Galactica” again without wincing. This show, too, was born to die, but more than that, it was born to sully, born to kill. </p>
<p>And it did.</p>
<p>So that’s how it works in the big leagues, kids. That’s why so many shows that have potential wither on the vine and die.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/editorial">Editorial</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/b5">B5</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/firefly">Firefly</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/network-politics">Network politics</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/crusade">Crusade</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/futurama">Futurama</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/galactica-1980">Galactica 1980</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/tog">TOG</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:00:00 +0000Republibot 3.0919 at http://www.republibot.comDEFYING GRAVITY PROP AUCTIONhttp://www.republibot.com/content/defying-gravity-prop-auction
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, November 7, 2010 - 10:32</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The lovely and talented Docwho2100 has informed me that the Defying Gravity props and costumes and possibly the sets are being auctioned off. If you liked Defying Gravity, and you've got a lot of disposable income, then we should be friends. You know what? You could tell me what you want, and, like, give me the money, and, like, I'd buy the stuff for you. I, like, totally promise, not to run off with your cash, or (more likely) buy the stuff with your money, and run off with it.*</p>
<p>Because I like you. Trust me.** </p>
<p>Just like with the Galactica auction last year, these things provide a great opportunity to get a good look at stuff.</p>
<p>Check it out here!<br />
<a href="http://defyinggravity.propworx.com/">http://defyinggravity.propworx.com/</a> </p>
<p>*- Promises not legally binding.<br />
** - Claims that I like you are not legally binding. I may, in fact, think you're a dork. But I probably don't.***<br />
*** - Claims made in footnotes are, likewise, not legally binding.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:32:35 +0000Republibot 3.03987 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Kiss” (Episode 13)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Ckiss%E2%80%9D-episode-13
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 13:16</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>I’m a sucker for goodbyes. The way things end are, for me, a lot more important than the way they begin, if only because, so often in life, we don’t really notice when things begin. You meet a girl at a party, and you’ve got no way of knowing you’ll end up marrying her; you buy a car with no idea that keeping the damn piece of crap running will cost so much money that you stupidly let your health insurance lapse, and then something goes wrong with you, personally; you have no way of knowing that annoying guy in the room across the hall in the dorm will end up being your best friend decades later, and so on. These things slip by unnoticed, and it’s only in hindsight that they have any real significance.</p>
<p>The actual goodbyes themselves I’m less particular about. They’re generally not all that good. Seinfeld ended badly, so did Northern Exposure, so did Cheers, so did Frasier. Yes, the M*A*S*H* finale moved me, but the show had long-overstayed its welcome by that point, the same is true of the Star Trek: TNG finale. The Babylon 5 finale moved me, eventually, but to my shame I had years and years of growing up to do before I finally got to the point where I ‘got’ it. </p>
<p>Curiously, the goodbyes that have the mean the most to me are the ones you hoped wouldn’t happen, the de facto finales where you’re forced to say goodbye to people you weren’t really done with yet. The premature finales of SG1 and Atlantis pissed me off because, clearly, we hadn’t reached the end of the road yet. The abrupt cancellation of Firefly affected me in ways that Serenity was never able to really make up for. The last episode of Crusade (By my count) is the one where the ship visits B5, and Max mentions that “Babylon 5 is one of those things that just goes on too long.” The last episode of The Monkees - the Frodus Plant episode - is strangely haunting, and when I found out, years later, that there was a Monkees movie, that just made matters worse: That final scene of them in a water tank, being driven away from the camera, pounding on the glass, trying to get out…well…suffice to say I never really got closure.</p>
<p>So it goes without saying that this has been a really rough year for me: Not only did Galactica totally crap out, but we lost Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chonicles, Dollhouse is doomed, we lost Kings, the best SF show since Firefly. And on top of that, we’ve lost Defying Gravity, a show I’d really grown to love. </p>
<p>Yes, I’m aware the show had problems. Pretty much nothing happened in nearly half of the episodes, it moved at an almost Mosfilm pace at times, it was overly PC and New Agey, it conflicted with my own values at times, and while I still don’t know what the hell was going on with Nadia, pretty much everything tied to that subplot was particularly icksome*. There were plenty of problems, I’m fully aware of that, and I’m fully aware that the show would have *eventually* let me down like Galactica did, probably in some similarly self-righteous and fundamentally silly fashion. Trust me, I get it: This is not my first barbecue. </p>
<p>None of which matters, really, because sometimes the spooky-yet-hot goth girl that you’ve been sneaking looks at for years comes up to you on the last day of high school, kisses you square on the lips, and then leaves and you never see her again, and you spend the next quarter century wondering what it would have been like, not so much because you want to trade what you have now - which is great - nor because you have some goofy romantic daydream assumptions of how things would have gone with her, but rather because you feel like maybe you missed something you could only have gotten through being destroyed by her. </p>
<p>As my band (“Republibot 3.0 and the Republibot 3.0 Orchestra, Featuring Republibot 3.0”) occasionally sings, “I’d still love to have been destroyed by you/For a year or two.”</p>
<p>All of which is my long-winded obituary for Defying Gravity. Forgive me for rambling on. It’s not all bad, after all: As unintentional final episodes go, this was a pretty good one:</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>In 2043: The Chinese launch a probe to Venus, which evidently crashlands near the Gamma site. Some time after this, “We” launch two failed probes there as well. Around this same time, Donner gets back to earth from Mars, and has a vasectomy because he doesn’t want a wife, a family, or any of that. He embarks on a life of one-night stands.</p>
<p>In 2047:<br />
Zoe’s getting an eagle tattoo on her back when Donner shows up, trying to talk her out of leaving. Jen quickly gets rid of him, because Zoe is trying to demark her life between “Pre Eagle” and “Post Eagle,” and doesn’t want Donner confusing things by being “Mid-Eagle” (As he puts it). AJ gets the job of taking Donner to the train station to wait for them all to come back, and he almost - but not quite - lets it slip about the abortion. He and Donner talk chicks. Eventually, Zoe turns up, and everyone says their goodbyes, she gets on her train and leaves. Donner is clearly lamenting this badly. </p>
<p>That night, Rollie and Jen - who’s evidently known Rollie’s crushing on her all along - end up making out his truck while Eve and Shaw have dinner together, and Eve says what’s probably the driving aesthetic decision behind this series as a whole, “It’s all so big, so grand - space - maybe we need to bring this down to size - home and family.” I think that’s what they’ve been trying to do with the show all along - bring the mysteries of the (fictional and real) universes down to a scale an average audience can ‘get.’</p>
<p>Donner decides to go to the same tattoo place Zoe went to, and gets a tattoo that ‘won’t show up in the locker room’ - it’s a bucket, on the bottom of his foot.</p>
<p>In 2052:</p>
<p>Zoe disregards the game plan, and heads towards the sounds of crying, which no one but her can hear. There’s no way she’ll make it - the suit is only rated for 20 minutes and 100 meters, and this thing is nearly three times that away. On the Antares, Paula assists with the faked landing footage ground control has requested, which is glitching slightly - “Anyone but me disturbed by that black rock that just popped up?” - but no one at large appears to notice.</p>
<p>Arnell writes Zoe off as dead, enraging AJ who screams at him. Goss - in his one pure ‘good guy’ moment - extols Zoe’s suicide run as ‘true courage’ and says “That’s what we aspire to.”</p>
<p>Knowing it’s a suicide run, everyone tries to talk an increasingly erratic Zoe back to the lander, but she won’t do it. Shaw is increasingly fearful of Donner’s mental state as well, fearing what loosing yet another woman he loves on yet another desolate rock. Zoe tells Donner - and everyone - that she’s hearing a baby’s cry, and eventually finds Gamma, which appears as a glowing infant. She picks it up, and says “I’ve got our baby” to Donner who…suddenly….gets….it, and looks like he just got punched in the stomach. Stunned, he calls AJ on earth, who confirms what happened. Donner, despite obvious pain at all this, shakes it off and attempts to figure out how to stay on Venus longer to buy Zoe some more time. They jiggle the handle to give the suit a couple extra minutes, but it fails just as she gets back to the lander. They’re able to retrieve her and the Gamma object, and lift off.</p>
<p>Back on the Antares, Zoe’s in a bad way, dehydrated, exhausted, lung damage, 3rd degree burns over half her body, “She should be dead” Evram says in no uncertain terms. Claire agrees on Earth, and they speculate that the ‘genome changes’ the crew have been going through have been to make them more survivable on this mission, “A little boost” to help them over the rough patches. Paula finally sees her miracle in its entirety: She came home from school, her mom’s boyfriend tried to molest her, she ran away, her dog got hit by a car, (Well, I called that) and then the molester-boyfriend gave the dog mouth-to-mouth to get it breathing again. (Well, I didn’t call that.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, all of this is interspersed with the Antares crew wondering why the Objects keep trying to attract them and kill them off. Paula and Evram speculate that perhaps it’s like Job in the bible - he was tested by the devil to give up his faith in God. Maybe the Objects want the test to be as hard as possible to see if we’re up to the challenge.</p>
<p>Arnel Texts Trevor, the English reporter, to let him know all is not as it seems. Rollie goes to the hospital to face the girl he ran over. The police are waiting for him. Talking to Eve, Shaw voices his forebodings about the future. </p>
<p>In surgery, Zoe’s in a bad way. Donner kisses her on the lips, and she wakes up and smiles at him, though she’s still in a very bad way.</p>
<p>The end, forever and ever.</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>Before we begin, yes, I’m sorry, the show is dead. TV.Com reported that the show was actually cancelled a couple months ago, and the sets have been destroyed. This was an expensive production (Rumored budget of between $2 million and $3 million per episode), and though I have no idea how much the sets cost, they were obviously very high quality and expensive, so what this means is that the show isn’t coming back. Even if - somehow - a write in campaign worked at this point, they couldn’t simply re-start production. Rather they’d have to completely rebuild everything from scratch. For all intents and purposes that would mean continuing this show for another year would be every bit as expensive as it was to develop it in the first place, which is simply unaffordable. I mean, the reason it was a multinational production to begin with was the because the expense was too great for any one company involved to afford. So, I’m sorry my friends, but this is all we’re going to get.</p>
<p>Damn, was this a pulse-pounder, or what? I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing. The intercutting between Zoe leaving in 2047 and her suicide run in 2052 was extremely well done. Also, I like that they didn’t resolve how she got back in the program. The clues are there - Arnel looses a leg, obviously - and she gets his slot. Still and all, however, I like that they ended the flashback with her leaving. There’s a nice poignancy in that, I suspect because the producers knew they likely weren’t coming back for another year. I like that. It captured my feelings at leaving these people behind perfectly. It’s similar to the funeral scene at the end of the penultimate episode of “Firefly,” (Which was the last episode they filmed).</p>
<p>It appeared that the girl Rollie ran over lost both of her lower legs, and it appeared she’s still in a coma. I'm a little fuzzy on his apparent arrest at the end - I mean, the ISA had already paid off the police, right? So why's he getting arrested again? </p>
<p>I really don’t know what we’re supposed to make of the child molester saving the dog’s life - what? He rapes kids, but he’s good with animals, so that’s OK? There’s a subtext there that I wasn’t getting, I guess. It’s interesting that Paula interpreted it as a miracle, however, because she’d completely edited that guy out of her memories of the incident. As Wassenfelder said, “Miracles are what we know with parts missing.” It would appear that Gamma gave this reconstituted memory to her. </p>
<p>What the hell is Wassenfelder’s job, anyway? He’s got no apparent duties at any point in the show, other than moving crates around, and he damn near killed Paula doing that…</p>
<p>It was interesting to watch Nadia’s increasing hysteria over Donner’s impending death. Despite all her insistence that their relationship is just a ‘sex buddy’ thing, she’s clearly in love with him. It’s interesting that no one seems to have noticed this before, since they’ve telegraphed it a bit. I mean, at least as much as Rollie’s crush on Jen. We’ve toyed with the idea of Dickensian names on this show before - Nadia Schilling was one I couldn’t get. It occurred to me while watching this that maybe it’s something like “Nadia” = “Not A” and “Schilling” could be “Shill” (one who sells stuff disingenuously), or maybe it’s just a phonetic gag for “Not a she” or “Not as he ling.” No idea what “Ling” would be, and I admit that’s one hell of a stretch. It could just as likely be a nod to Peter Schilling, who had that “Major Tom” song in the 80s.</p>
<p>When they recover Zoe at the end, they’re wearing hazmat suits rather than space suits. That got me to wonder: have we ever seen more than 2 space suits at a time? I feel like we have, but I can’t remember off the top of my head, and obviously, those kinds of things are expensive to make.</p>
<p>The Chinese lander ruins were interesting. Evidently, the Chinese know about the objects too, and evidently they’re not part of the ISA. It’s most likely an unmanned retrieval probe kind of dealie, but the dialog is a bit ambiguous, there’s a slight chance it might have been manned. Evidently, the US or ISA attempted some kind of automated retrieval program twice, with both missions being launched in secret from Canaveral. Canaveral, we’re told, is underwater, but evidently still in use for top-secret space missions, though this isn’t commonly known. Damn, but I would love to have known more about that! The use of “ours” is a bit ambiguous, it could mean “American” or “ISA.” Is there an American space program independent of the ISA? (Sort of like France maintains one independent of the ESA) We’ve not seen any Russians in the ISA, so is it kind of a generic western democracies space program? What happened to the older national and international programs? </p>
<p>We don’t get a really good look at the Earth from space in this series, but what glimpses we saw looked pretty much like the world as it is now, and not like this <a href="http://www.worlddreambank.org/D/DUBNORAM.JPG">http://www.worlddreambank.org/D/DUBNORAM.JPG</a> I think I would have noticed if Florida was missing. The show’s offhand mentions of environmental changes have been very inconsistent - we’re told the world is warmer, but in another episode Jen said the great barrier reef is above water, which would mean the world is in another ice age. </p>
<p>Goss didn’t know about the abortion. He did not seem happy with Eve glossing over her explanation of it. </p>
<p>Zoe abandoned the sled at some point, but we didn’t see it, and no one mentioned it.</p>
<p>It was interesting that Evram and Paula both agreed about the Job thing. In the Bible, Job looses everything except his nagging wife and his life, and is ultimately rewarded with twice as much as he lost when the trials began. I suppose we’re to take this to mean that the promise of the mission is much greater than the cost. </p>
<p>Ok, real science time: the lander, as shown, wouldn’t work. Last week we discussed the landing, and how it was derivative of the Apollo 1l LEMlanding on the moon, and utterly failed to take advantage of the local conditions on Venus that should have made the landing much, much easier. Today, we have the reverse problem: How do you get back in to orbit? In the show, they simply blast off like a LEM, and one cut later, we’re there. In reality it wouldn’t be so easy. </p>
<p>Since the earliest days of space flight, most EVA suits have a water or Tang supply that you can access through a nozzle on the inside of the helmet. Why didn’t Zoe’s have this? They keep talking about her dehydration, well that’s an easy fix - and we’ve been using that easy fix for nearly fifty years. Why aren’t they using it forty years from now? </p>
<p>Firstly, all things being equal, Venus has gravity that’s insignificantly lower than earth. Let’s assume, for sake of argument, that the crew compartment of the lander is about the size and weight of an Apollo capsule. It looks bigger, but, just to give us a reference point, let’s say it’s about the same . Now since the gravity on Venus is almost the same as on earth, it follows that it would take about as much energy to put a six-ton payload in orbit around Venus as it would on earth. It follows, then, that the lander would have to be about the same size as a Saturn 1B rocket - about 224 feet tall an about 22 feet wide. </p>
<p>Problem number two is the high temperature on Venus: In order to work in an atmosphere, the combustion temperature of a rocket must be higher than the ambient temperature outside. If it isn’t, then you don’t really have a rocket, you’ve got an incredibly inefficient refrigerator (As Fred Phol pointed out), and it just won’t work. So you need some super-high energy fuel if you’re going to do it that way. </p>
<p>Problem number three is that in the extremely high pressure, it would be like attempting to launch a rocket from half a mile down in the ocean, which means that (A) you’ve got to build a rocket that can stand the higher pressures - which means a bigger, heavier, sturdier rocket than you’d use on earth - and (B) vastly more atmospheric resistance, which means you’d need to use more fuel. </p>
<p>All of these factors conspire to mean you’d need a rocket that’s much larger than a Saturn 1B, though probably not as big as a Saturn V, to get back off the surface, if you’re going to use a rocket to do it. And keep in mind that you need to actually somehow LAND this big beastie on Venus all in one piece in the first place. So: bottom line, it’s not an insurmountable problem, but it certainly wouldn’t work the way they show it in this episode.</p>
<p>And in the end, well, this is the end. At least we got a bit of closure. We’ll never know what it all meant, or where they’re going from here, but at least we made it to the end of the chapter, and though we’ll never get another one, if you’re not going all the way to the end, this is as good a place as any to stop. It’s more of a finale than Cantebury Tales got, right? That’s got to be worth something. In the end, I think the show was a worthy experiment, and I like the way they dealt with their sprawling cast and I liked the now-and-then flashback style, which was similar to Lost, but at the same time completely different. Should I ever get to make my own show, I think I’ll steal it in some capacity. </p>
<p>I’m sad to see it end. How about the rest of you? Sound off in comments. </p>
<p>UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS</p>
<p>Why did Gamma give Paula the reconstituted memory of nearly getting raped as a kid?</p>
<p>Why can’t Jen see the Objects? </p>
<p>Why didn’t Wassenfelder hallucinate? </p>
<p>What the hell is the deal with Nadia’s hallucinations? </p>
<p>What are the objects? What do they want? </p>
<p>What is “The Big Prize” that they get for completing the mission?</p>
<p>What will happen to Rollie? Will his and Jen's marriage survive? Will Eve and Shaw's? </p>
<p>What happens next?</p>
<p>TO ALL OF YOU who’ve visited Republibot specifically because we’re the only American website bothering to cover this show, and treating it seriously, I’d like to thank you for your time, comments, assistance, and patronage. I’d like to welcome you to stick around, and continue to visit our site and be part of our little community, if you haven’t already gotten comfortable here and checked the place out. We’ve got a lot to offer, and we’d hate you to stop coming around simply because the show ended. </p>
<p>And though this show has ended, should any more information of note come up about it, we’ll still post it on the site, and, of course, if any of you find out anything interesting about it, please let us know. We’re interested in your theories as to what it’s all about, as well, and feel free to email me with ‘em, or post ‘em in comments. </p>
<p>Special thanks to Channel 131 and to Nwkeys01, who have been instrumental in allowing us to continue covering this show when it went off the air in the ‘states.</p>
<p>The final episode is online here <a href="http://www.ch131.com/defyinggravity113.htm">http://www.ch131.com/defyinggravity113.htm</a></p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/venus">Venus</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/doomed-shows">Doomed Shows</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/final-episodes">Final Episodes</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:16:51 +0000Republibot 3.01038 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity “Venus” (Episode 12)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Cvenus%E2%80%9D-episode-12
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Saturday, October 17, 2009 - 13:02</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Our Exclusive-by-Default coverage of Defying Gravity continues with this, the show’s penultimate episode. To all our visitors from Canada and the UK, we bid you welcome. </p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>In 2047:</p>
<p>The Ascans are facing the first cut - of the 30 of them in the program, ten will not survive to the next round. We’re told that Zoe and a couple others are on the cusp, but Eve wants Wassenfelder on the mission for some undisclosed reason, which means someone else has to get bumped.</p>
<p>Zoe wakes up to see a big bald eagle hovering over her window. She goes in to the space center nervous, knowing she has little chance, and sure enough, she’s cut. She takes the news apparently quite well, and more-or-less brushes off everyone else’s condolences. Nadia, of course, was ranked #1. That night everyone (Excepting Zoe) heads to Major Toms to celebrate, but Nadia tells Donner that he’s no fun, and can go if he wants. He wants. He leaves - to Nadia’s obvious disdain - and then he and Zoe evidently knock spaceboots all knight long. The next morning, the eagle is back, so she kicks Donner out saying, essentially, “If I can’t be an astronaut, then I can’t stand to be around people who are.” He leaves. Evram and Claire finally hooked up the night before as well. </p>
<p>Several of the others show up to help her move, and lug all her crap to the train station. She’s got five hours to kill, and sees some people with a lot of tattoos, so she decides to get one. It’s a massive Eskimo eagle dealie, which she wants done all in one session, and so the tattoist gets started.</p>
<p>In 2052:</p>
<p>Nadia and Donner didn’t have sex. Neither did Paula and Wassenfelder, obviously. Both spent their nights chastely in each other’s arms. Zoe assumes otherwise (Naturally) and teases Donner about it. Jen, meanwhile, gets bitchier and bitchier, and is almost deliberately trying to drive Rollie away, and though she recognizes something is wrong with him, she doesn’t care what it is. In a rare non-pissy moment, she does tell Zoe that she would die if she had to live without her. </p>
<p>Nadia, meanwhile, is continuing to have hallucinations of herself with a baseball cap and a beard. In one of these, the doppelganger looks at her rather accusingly I think. Paula, obviously rattled, asks Wassenfelder if he believes in Miracles, and he says “Miracles are just the stuff we know with pieces missing” (Which fits Paula’s situation to a T) and the two of them get in a discussion of faith culminating with him saying that the most religious, faithful people he knows are physicists, who’s work convinces them there’s a higher power.</p>
<p>Claire, meanwhile, defies orders (Go, Claire! Yes! Finally someone in this show who does the right thing!) and tells Evram about the “Genome Changes” they’re experiencing. Evram is very upset by this, but they agree to conspiratorially keep watching the changes, as there’s nothing more they can do. Meanwhile, on earth, the English reporter dude is sensing a story, and he’s pushing hard to get details from AJ and Arnell. </p>
<p>The mission has a very short clock: they can’t stay on the surface for more than 20 minutes or else the caustic atmosphere will start to disintegrate the lander. Zoe’s mobility is limited to about 100 meters. They also don’t want people on earth to see “Gamma”, so they conspire (Groan) to fake part of the landing - one half of it will be real stuff, the other half will be stock footage of the team scuttling around in Arizona, gussied up with some special effects. (Extra groan!) Paula reacts not at all well to this, but rolls with it. She says a prayer for the mission. </p>
<p>The lander goes down, and they loose contact with the ship during entry (why?) and are getting a massive crosswind, and they land more than 200 meters from Gamma. They’re screwed. They resign themselves to collecting some rocks, but then Zoe hears a baby crying, and goes off following it, straight to Gamma on foot, but there’s no way in hell she can get there and back before the heat and pressure and acidic atmosphere kill them all…</p>
<p>To Be Continued…</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>Man, this was an unusually smarmy episode - a lot more smut-talk than usual, a lot more overt dialog using words like “Screwed” and stuff that weren’t allowed on TV just a couple years ago. It wasn’t terribly offensive, no worse than average dorm talk, but still surprising. This show was conceived as being aired on a pay-cable network, like HBO or Showtime, and not for a broadcast network. As a result, the series kind of skirts the line of what’s allowable for FCC standards. (Cable has lower standards than broadcast, since it’s theoretically harder for kids and people who don’t want to see/hear such things to do so accidentally.)</p>
<p>One half of our double cliffhanger isn’t too hard to figure: Arnell was one of the ones who made the cut, Zoe wasn’t. Beta wants Zoe on the mission for whatever reason, so he’s going to cause Arnell to have an accident in which he looses his leg. He’ll get cut, and Zoe - who we’ll discover was #21 on the list - will be back in.</p>
<p>Speaking of Arnell, you know damn well that he’s gonna’ crack and tell the British Reporter Dude exactly what’s going on. In fact, you know damn well that he’s going to do it in the next episode. My hunch is that when the reporter finds out what’s really going on, he, himself, will decide to sit on the story rather than broadcast it because he is, after all, a decent guy. </p>
<p>I noticed this weeks ago, but keep forgetting to mention it: Zoe’s apartment bears a striking resemblance to Starbuck’s apartment from the RDM Battlestar Galactica, except that the entrance is on the ground floor, rather than at the top of the stairs. I mean, it’s really close - it could actually be the same set, at least the living room area. I wonder if that actually *is* a set, or an actual location they found somewhere, since they re-used it as Leoben’s apartment during the New Caprica Occupation arc as well, even though it made little sense to do so.</p>
<p>The first words on Venus: “Mark the day with a footprint, a sep forward in the path of man.” Meh. After two episodes of agonizing over this, I expected better. They were making fun of Armstrong’s “One small step,” which seems unfair to me, that’s completely brilliant and even noble.</p>
<p>Paula’s clearly struggling with her faith, and her faith is obviously, on some level, there to cover up some deep trauma as a kid (Again, I’m voting on sexual abuse, but it could just be a neglectful mother). She seems to have hit some level of ambient pressure, however, in which she can both believe and doubt at the same time and still function. Wassenfelder appears to be instrumental in this, though he didn’t really do much. It’s obvious that their emerging relationship is supposed to symbolize a synthesis of the Religious and the Scientific, the Rational and Irrational, which is, I think, at root what this show is all about. </p>
<p>Paula’s prayer deserves comment here: “Lord, please protect our friends and colleagues, Zoe and Donner, in this difficult task. If we’re facing evil, protect us. If we’re facing You, protect us. All we are seeking is the truth, and in Your Name we serve. Amen.” Nice, short, to the point, and kind of touching. </p>
<p>For those who pooh-pooh this whole notion of science and religion getting along and playing nice, for those who bristle at the thought of a prayer in a space show, I’ll mention that the first thing Buzz Aldrin did, after they buttoned down from the lunar landing was to have a catholic communion. </p>
<p>The lander is named “Crossbow” - that’s so cool!</p>
<p>An “Auto-abort” feature seems like a really bad idea to me. If it’s a pins-and-needles landing (As, say, Apollo 11 was), you really don’t want something like that distracting the pilot at the last crucial moment. Added to which, an abort-to-space is probably more dangerous than a bungled landing. Why? Well, in the Apollo program, an abort-to-orbit would have put the LEM in an unpredictable orbit way out of schedule, with little or no spare fuel with which to dock with the CM. </p>
<p>There’s a couple scientific qualms with the landing as depicted, but on the whole I give them high marks for trying to do it accurately.<br />
Though the rocket engines looked really cool, there’s really no reason you’d use rockets to land on the surface of Venus - the atmosphere is so amazingly dense (roughly equal to the water pressure of our oceans about half a mile down) that it would make more sense just to use ballast tanks or a balloon or something. The atmosphere is so dense that it would eat up most of the re-entry velocity without needing to use any fuel, and then, since it’s so dense, getting about on the surface would be a snap - the whole lander could ‘float’ in the air like a minisub, and it could move around just by using small propellers. The failing here is that the writers are treating this like a lunar or Martian landing, and in fact the environment is completely different, so those approaches aren’t appropriate, or even really feasible. I’m not ragging on them for it - they’re writers and producers after all, not scientists - I’m just pointing it out.</p>
<p>Another thing I’m fuzzy on is why they went through communications blackout, though this is less of an issue. On earth, when spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere, they’re going so fast that the atmosphere literally burns from the friction at such a high temperature that a field of plasma grows up around the spacecraft, and this plasma is dense enough to block radio waves. This usually lasts six or eight minutes, depending on the velocity and stuff. That said, however, the plasma is only on the *bottom* of the re-entry vehicle, so it’s blocking signals heading to or from the ground. Since the shuttle’s been in service, we’ve put up communications satellites that relay communication to re-entering spacecraft from above. In other words, flight control calls a satellite, which calls the shuttle, and the shuttle responds to the satellite, which calls flight, get it? Since the Antares is in orbit ABOVE the Crossbow as it’s going in, they shouldn’t loose communications at all. </p>
<p>I think. It’s possible that since the atmosphere is so dense, the plasma field might be considerably larger and enshroud the entire ship briefly, but that seems unlikely to me.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the JIM suit-like nature of Zoe’s V-suit makes perfect sense ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIM_suit">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIM_suit</a> ) and they got that one bang on. Likewise, limited surface time would be a problem, owing to the extreme conditions, but 20 minutes does seem ludicrously short. (I mean, they’ve got heat shields to get them through entry, these would theoretically work on the surface too, and if not, hell, just make the outer hull out of ceramic, which handles high temperatures well and is impervious to most acids)</p>
<p>My final concern - the difficulty of liftoff - I’ll table until next week, but suffice to say the lander we saw would realistically be incapable of getting back to orbit. Just for fun, see if you guys can figure out why, and post your answers in the comments!</p>
<p>Very much looking forward to the finale next week. In the meantime, you can watch the episode online here <a href="http://www.megavideo.com/?d=UH5B8FKE">http://www.megavideo.com/?d=UH5B8FKE</a> , and as always, special thanks to astute republibot nwkeys01 for finding it for us!</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/venus">Venus</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/doomed-shows">Doomed Shows</a></li></ul></section>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:02:50 +0000Republibot 3.01016 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Solitary” (Episode 11)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Csolitary%E2%80%9D-episode-11
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, October 11, 2009 - 11:35</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Our stint as the only American Webiste covering Defying Gravity continues! We’re doing this (A) because we like the show, and (B) as a service to fans who’ve been jerked around by a lack of network support and scheduling, and don’t feel like waiting around for six months to see the final episodes. We’re also hoping to engender discussion and support for Canadian viewers who are looking for info and observations about the show. If you’ve found this review, and you know people who like the show, please do tell your friends!</p>
<p>Before we get started, I’d like to give a shoutout to Defying Gravity (dot) com located here <a href="http://defyinggravity.wetpaint.com/">http://defyinggravity.wetpaint.com/</a> - this is the best fansite I’ve found dedicated soley to the show, and I’d recommend anyone who likes this series might wanna’ go there and take a look. They’re trying to get a face book petition going to bring DG back for a second season, and could use your support, if you’re of a mind to try that sort of thing, but even if you’re not, definitely check it out.</p>
<p>Getting to this episode: Yet another intermezzo in which little happens apart from character development, but it somehow works out far better than last week. (Can you have an intermezzo that doesn’t take place between two acts? I mean, you can’t really have two intermezzos back to back, can you? Oh well, no matter)</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2042:<br />
“Walker” continues to live up his Dickensian name by being the first person to walk on Mars. His first words, “Red planet conquered, the warrior brought to his knees.” Presumably eyes roll all across earth, and ten years later these ‘first words’ are still regarded as something of a joke.</p>
<p>2047:<br />
The Antares ascans (Astronaut Candidates) are forced to undergo sensory deprivation, presumably as part of their psychological evaluation. We’re told this is mandatory. Rollie, who’s already a flown astronaut you’ll recall, is the instructor in charge of the exercise. At this point, this batch of ascans consists of the Antares crew (And main cast) as well as future washouts, Claire and Arnell, who hasn’t lost his leg yet. AJ is conspicuously absent.</p>
<p>For the most part it goes well: Wassenfelder falls asleep in the sensory deprivation tank. Zoe, Evram, Claire, and Arnell have no problems, nor even any remarkable experiences in there. Paula has a vision of a miracle from her childhood, and is fine. Nadia says she’s fine and manages to plow through it, but afterwards we see her seated in a fetal ball in a shower, obviously terrified. Jen, meanwhile, screws the proverbial pooch and lasts only 42 seconds before she has Rollie haul her out. She was having visions of being lost in an airport as a very little girl. She goes and buttonholes Shaw, and takes him home for sex. Rollie calls and gets her in a later session, since they have to pass the tank, or wash out. She asks Shaw to help her get through it by being there, and he says he’ll try, but he doesn’t show. Rollie tells her that he did poorly his first time, but gives her a tongue twister to concentrate on, and if she can do that, she won’t have time for fear. She works on it, still plenty afraid. </p>
<p>Wassenfelder has heard that everyone is sex-crazy after a session in the tanks, and is trying utterly ineffectually to score, both with the female ascans and total strangers. Donner makes one of his trademark half concern/half hitting on plays on Zoe, and she insists that she’s on a date with Wassenfelder. They play darts, which she claims - stupidly - to love playing, but she’s terrible. Nadia shows up in a slinky dress and demands sex with Donner in the bathroom at the bar right now. He kinda’ blows her off to finish his game of darts, so Nadia takes the darts away from him, and throws the win. Claire, meanwhile, hits on Evram, but he turns her down because “He likes her a lot,” and he’s “Not the kind of guy she should get involved with.” Good for him!</p>
<p>Out of the tank, Jen thanks Rollie profusely, and he makes a play for her, but she brushes him off and goes to the bar. There, the English reporter guy makes a play for her, and she takes him up on it. They head home. Donner, meanwhile, gives Zoe some pointers on throwing darts: “You’re holding on too tight. Slow down, relax, and let the dart do the flying.” Donner and Nadia head home, in a relationship that just gets creepier and creepier. </p>
<p>The next day, Shaw tries to make it up to Jen by taking her some Chinese food, but she literally shuts the door in his face.</p>
<p>2052:<br />
The Antares is in orbit around Venus. The landing is scheduled for the next day. Everyone is trying to deal with isolation in their own ways: The crew on the ship, the ground crew dealing with their distance from their families and lovers, and Rollie in jail, literally unable to contact anyone.</p>
<p>Zoe has been told to do nothing all day, relax, so she’ll be bright and shiny for the landing tomorrow. She’s not good at relaxing, so Donner tells her to work on some ‘first words’ that will hopefully be better than Walkers. She begins to obsess over having nothing to say.</p>
<p>Donner, meanwhile, is obsessive that the mission will not go the way it did on Mars, and will not leave the simulator, exhausting himself in various sim-landings that are far more difficult than anything they’re likely to encounter. He won’t let it go, he won’t let Zoe help, and he’s kind of a bastard to everyone around him.</p>
<p>Nadia hallucinates about her bearded doppelganger.</p>
<p>Jen tries to contact Rollie, but can’t get a hold of him - GC is issuing a cover-story.</p>
<p>Paula is contrite over her freakout, and wants to jump right back in to the routine of things, but ground control won’t let her. They sentence her to a psych session with Evram. The session centers on her ‘miracle’ - when she was a little girl, about 8 from the look of it - she came home from school, and her dog got out and was hit by a car, and was dead. She prayed really hard, and suddenly he was alive again. Evram questions her about this again and again, and it becomes apparent that there’s some details unconsciously missing from the story - how did the door get open? Was anyone home? How did the dead dog get from the middle of the road to the side of the road in Paula’s arms? Whenever he gets to one of these missing details, Paula gets more reserved. It also becomes apparent that Paula’s mom was never around. Ultimately, she stomps off. There’s clearly buried issues here. </p>
<p>Paula has another freakout, and ends up crying in Wassenfelders’ arms, eventually crying herself to sleep.</p>
<p>Back on earth, Goss manages to bail Rollie out of jail and cover up the story. Rollie, it seems, was very solidly DUI at the time. The girl survived, and is in a coma, but it’s unclear if she’ll live or whatever. Rollie is devastated by all this, and more than a little upset that he’s being let go and put back on the floor as if nothing happened. Claire, meanwhile, has discovered that the “Genome” of the crew is changing, and wants to warn them about it, but Goss won’t let her. She’s upset about this. Meanwhile, the English reporter dude manages to find someone at a pharmaceutical company who’s 99% sure the ’tainted batch of HALOs’ story is a lie, but they need to find someone inside the ISA to confirm this. </p>
<p>Back on the ship, Zoe tells Donner “You’re holding on too tight. Slow down, relax, and blah blah blah” and suddenly he’s able to stick the landing. He calls it a night, and gets back to his cabin to find Nadia there. She tries to play it off as being in the mood for love, but quickly reveals that she’s a mess.</p>
<p>The End.</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>I really liked how the physical separation was handled on earth in the flashbacks, while the metaphorical separation was handled in space. This was counter-intuitive, but I think it worked much better playing it this way. There’s something more poignant about being completely alone in a crowd than there is about being alone in solitude, and I think that gives it a bit of resonance. This hits its peak in the well-intercut sequence where Jen’s in the tank, reciting the tongue twister, and Rollie’s in jail reciting it, and Jen’s on the ship reciting it. I like how these events build on each other, and given the deliberately fractured narrative, they can even bounce off each other. </p>
<p>This episode got me thinking about Lost, which is unquestionably the best SF show in production today. Defying Gravity deserves some attention - if for no other reason, then because they’re the only other SF show that’s been able to make good use of the ’Lostback’ plot device Lost invented and used. (Many shows have tried and failed.) Some time back I joked that after Lost was done, it would be fun to take every episode apart, and edit the whole thing together chronologically, with all the flashbacks (“Lostbacks”) independent of their episodes and airing in their chronological order. You just know some OCD guy is gonna’ do that eventually, which, given the time travel involved, is gonna’ be mildly confusing.<br />
I got to thinking that it would be fun - and really much easier - to do that with Defying Gravity: Have all the Mars sequences first, then the Ascan sequences in chronological order, and then the mission stuff. There’s no point to doing this, of course, and I actually really dig the way the producers have chosen to put this show together, but it would be interesting to see if things like Zoe quoting Donner would have the greater or lesser impact after several hours of intervening screen time. Just a thought, but not a very substantial one, I’ll be the first one to admit. </p>
<p>Donner must have done a hundred sim-landings by now. I got to wondering, shouldn’t there be a sim-liftoff? Given the surface conditions on Venus, Landing should be comparatively easy, and akin to, say, maneuvering a minisub (Venus’ atmospheric pressure at the surface is about the same as the ocean’s pressure half a mile down). Taking off, however, is much, much harder, since the atmosphere is so hot. Why is that a problem? Because - as Fred Phol one pointed out - the average temperature is hotter than the combustion temperature of many rocket fuels. Therefore, if you tried to use them, you don’t end up with a rocket at all, but rather an incredibly expensive and inefficient refrigerator. Indeed, as regular visitors to this site will recall, I’m kind of obsessed with Venus: I’ve given a LOT of thought as to how one could get back off the surface again, and I’ve only really come up with one reasonably efficient way (Small Nuclear Pulse Rocket). I can almost guran-damn-tee that’s not what they’ll be using on this show, but I’m interested to see what they come up with, or if they even address it. If they *do* intend to use a conventional rocket to get back to orbit, the lander will have to be freakin’ huge. Like bigger-than-a-Saturn V huge.</p>
<p>Nadia’s bearded double is slightly taller than she is. It’s been strongly suggested that she used to be a dude, and I’m thinking the evidence is stacking up in that direction. For instance, in tonight’s episode, we’re shown that she has excellent eye/hand coordination with regard to hitting a target. This is one of those things that, traditionally, men are much better at than women, owing mostly to our plumbing. (Without getting too graphic, we’re shooting from the hip, so to speak, from a very early age.) Women can, and do learn this eye/hand stuff, and can get very good at it, but in general - and I’m not being sexist here, this is just statistical - in general, they don’t tend to learn it, or learn it late in life, and as such never develop quite as well as guys do. If you ever wondered why girls, on the whole, “Throw like girls,” there you go: Toilet training, coupled with a preponderance of ‘action’ toys for little boys (Cars, tools, guns) versus a preponderance of passive toys for little girls (Dolls). The idea that Nadia is that good - implied that she’s better than Donner, who’s a pilot - suggests - again, without getting too explicit - that she was shooting from the hip at an early age.</p>
<p>I gotta’ say that I’m hoping this isn’t the case, but it’s seeming more and more like it is. Good God, poor Donner!</p>
<p>Halos are not only sold to prisons and Astroanuts, they’re also sold to catholic priests. That cracked me up. Reasonable, too. </p>
<p>Nadia calling Zoe a “Bitter Space Nun” cracked me up too, by the way.</p>
<p>I haven't mentioned the sets on this show in quite a while, but damn I love them! I particularly love the way they were filmed in this episode - the cinematography was better than usual. </p>
<p>So just out of curiosity, where is the ISO located? They never say, but several things on the wall in Major Tom's bar imply it's Texas, despite being way the hell too cold. Anyone got any ideas? Anyone know? </p>
<p>There’s something dark going on in Paula’s past. She talked about how her mom was never there, and in the last flashback, we could see a guy in his underwear coming out of the house. I’m suspecting sexual abuse. I really liked how they played the psych session. As a guy who’s been in analysis more than a few times myself, I thought it was done pretty well. I particularly was impressed by how Paula was increasingly reserved the more agitated she got, which I’ve seen happen (Not in me, but in others). I also liked how Evram maintained focus in the session, and told one of his own stories to help the transference along, and how he simply ignored her occasional insults.That played out as real, even if I think he was pushing a bit too hard to get at the obviously-suppressed memories. You don’t do that kind of thing all at once, and I have to point out that each person only gets so much enlightenment as they can stand - any more than that is dangerous for you. As we kind of saw, with Paula breaking down afterwards, much worse than her previous freakouts.</p>
<p>On the subject of Enlightenment, the Reporter said “The best crew to send in space would be Buddhist monks, but it sounds bloody boring,” and later on when talking to Claire, Eve said “This mission is all about faith, and not of the religious kind. I don’t know where I come down on ‘God’, but…” That’s interesting. There’s an undercurrent of ‘the changing of the age’ that pervades this show, and we still really don’t know what the ISA is hoping to accomplish. We know what they want to do, but we don’t know what’s supposed to come out of it, what they hope to gain by doing it. If it’s a physical, scientific, or economic goal, than ‘faith’ isn’t really called for, it’s simply a case of math and timing and whether or not the crew are up to the challenge, but given the importance Eve is placing on ‘faith’, it’s apparent that their goals are not something so immediate and mundane, but some larger, presumably less-predictable thing that may not come off, or may come off, but not be all they hope it is. It’s also interesting that whatever it is they believe in is *very close* to religion, since Eve herself makes a point of distinguishing the two. I conclude, then, that the unstated goal of the mission is neither scientific nor religious, but rather a sort of preternatural quasi-religious thing.</p>
<p>Damn, I hate that this show is dying. I’d love to know that that kind of change could be!</p>
<p>Claire rants about spending $10 trillion dollars to send 8 people “Across the galaxy.” That’s strictly speaking not even close to true - across the solar system, yes, across the galaxy, no. I’m assuming she was imprecise because she was upset, but calling this an ‘across the galaxy’ mission is like saying an ant walking across the shell of an egg is ‘on a voyage around the world.’</p>
<p>Getting back to the ‘change’ theme again, $10 Trillion is a LOT of money. It’s about as much as the US federal government spent in the entire decade of the ‘80s. Granted, there’s inflation 50 years in the future, but still - this is an international mission. Why so much funding? Is it an act of desperation? I’m beginning to suspect that the world is about to fall apart, but the symptoms are not advanced enough to be noticed by the general public. This mission could be humanity’s ‘last, best hope’ to avoid this, which would explain the no-holds-barred funding.</p>
<p>Uhm…so did Donner and Nadia have sex in the bathroom, or what? She’s hunting for bear when she comes in, and she’s very calm when they leave…</p>
<p>What exactly is a “Genome mutation?” That’s a bit too doubletalky for me to follow, but obviously there’s physical changes taking place among the crew, even if they haven’t really noticed ‘em yet. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that Jen’s bunny was born, she continues to deal with her problems by getting bitchier and bitchier, though not so bad as last week. At one point, she chides Zoe for wanting to speak Latin on the surface of Venus as her first words, then claims she doesn’t speak it, she took Mandarin, “You know, one of the useful languages?” How is this possible? Jen is a scientist! Every scientist I know (including my wife) and every medical person I know (Including my wife) took a year or two of Latin, and have a working knowledge of it. Most have some Greek, too. Why? Because Latin is the international scientific language. I mean, hell, Chinese scientist are functional in Latin, so are Russians, so are scientists who grew up speaking Xosa. What, has it been replaced by Esperanto in the future? Or Klingon? Or have academic standards fallen that much? Or is Jen just being bitchy again? </p>
<p>(That said, I’ll be the first person to admit that Latin taxonomy is frequently stupid as hell. The Latin name for a skunk, for instance, is “Musteloidea Mephitidae,” which literally means “The smelliest of the smelly.” Personally, I’d welcome a slightly more rational taxonomic system, but I doubt we’re going to get one, and I’m sure we’re not going to get one in the next 50 years.)</p>
<p>I have to mention that Jen looked pretty fine in her dive suit. Grrrrrrowllll!</p>
<p>I wonder how Claire and Arnell washed out? I wonder why Evram didn’t want Claire to get involved with him (And I certainly admire his gallant desire to protect her). More than that, I wonder what caused him to get over it. Evram is drinking again by the end of this episode, by the way. And where the hell is AJ?</p>
<p>There’s something odd about Rolie’s (Frankly painful) breakdown in the prison cell - he mentions “Zoe” and “her family.” Are they alluding to something we don’t know about yet involving Zoe, or am I just hearing this wrong.</p>
<p>In the end, a solid, good, enjoyable episode, a bit on the slow side, but I think it worked out much better than last week. It felt a lot like this was what they were going for last week, but didn’t get.</p>
<p>If you’d like to watch the episode, go here <a href="http://www.ch131.com/defyinggravity111.htm">http://www.ch131.com/defyinggravity111.htm</a> and if that doesn’t work, then go here and select it by name <a href="http://www.ch131.com/dgseason1.htm">http://www.ch131.com/dgseason1.htm</a> and thanks, as always, to nwkeys01 for finding this for us.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/venus">Venus</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/doomed-shows">Doomed Shows</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:35:32 +0000Republibot 3.0998 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “déjà vu” (Episode 10)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Cd%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu%E2%80%9D-episode-10
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - 11:14</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Our brief and noteworthy run as the *only* American website that’s covering “Defying Gravity” continues, as we watch episodes that have aired in Canada, but which sit moldering on the shelves here in the ‘States because the network selfishly wants to run shows that are popular instead. At least for this one episode, they more-or-less made the right decision, since there’s little in this one to attract people. It’s kind of a place-holder episode that adds little to the ongoing story.</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2042 - The Mars Expedition is nearing its end: In orbit, Mike Goss remains in overall command of the mission, while on the ground, we’ve got Donner, Shaw, Donner’s girlfriend Sharon, and Walker. They’re living in a habitat, getting ready to bug out and head back to earth, with just one major Marswalk remaining. Sharon’s acting all weird, staring moon-eyed off in to the distance, looking edgy and strung out, and frankly quite a lot less pretty than the previous times we’ve seen her, and Walker is clearly in bad health - sweating, out of breath, chest pains - Donner jokingly implies this is due to over-vigorous masturbation, but the guy ignores him and just keeps on exercising.</p>
<p>When moving day comes, Walker and Sharon head out to retrieve Alpha, but a storm blows up, slowing the two of them down. Walker starts having a heart attack. As we all know, Donner and Shaw launch before they get back, and, presumably, Walker and Sharon die very shortly after that. </p>
<p>2052 - November 5th. It’s Election Day. The crew are casting their long-distance digital votes for President, and Paula’s covering it on the ship, while the English reporter guy is covering it back on the ground, and Goss flat-out states to him that he’s never going to let the Brit have access to his astronauts. The Brit continues to ask around about “Yesterday’s lockdown.” He targets Arnell, the minor character who’s always fine in the five-years-ago flashbacks, but conspicuously limping in the ‘present day’ stuff. Arnell resists, but it’s obvious that his will to resist is fleeting.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Rollie and Jen are having problems. Pardon my French, but Jen has generally been needlessly bitchy on this show, and she’s in bitch-overdrive mode this time out: She’ll barely tolerate her husband’s phone-ins, she snaps at him when he reveals a gift to her that he’d hidden aboard ship, she snaps and gets all defiant about her Canadian Citizenship when Paula good-naturedly tries to hand her a “Vote ‘52” pin for her jumpsuit, and then declares that her being married to an American “Makes him Canadian.” Even Zoe - who’s inexplicably befriended Jen lo this whole series - is concerned. She tries to get her to talk it out, and Jen finally admits she can’t see Beta or hear it, or whatever, and is freaked out by the implications of that, but then she keeps lashing out at Zoe and claiming that all Zoe wants to do is talk about herself. Zoe goes to help Paula with lander simulations, since they’re three days to touchdown. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Eve reveals yet more information that she’s been withholding, and Donner and Shaw get all pissed at her, though really the info is of no real consequence, and was more-or-less implicit in what we already knew: That the botched Mars mission was because Alpha didn’t want Walker to take it to Earth, and killed him as a form of rejection. Donner begins to realize that Gamma on Venus probably doesn’t want Paula there, and discusses it with Zoe - “I didn’t know what to look for ten years ago, but I do now.” Zoe gets upset at him. </p>
<p>Paula, meanwhile, is mysteriously all better from her religious fugue only the day before, and is excitedly looking forward to the mission, and stating that Beta is, if not God, then clearly an agent of God shepherding them to His grand purpose, whatever it is. This puts Zoe off a bit, but she handles it better than Wassenfelder and Jen handle these kinds of things. At first everything goes fine, but as they get closer to the planet, Paula begins to blow the simulated landings, and then her finger starts bleeding copiously, and just like that, she’s off the mission and relegated to covering the election results from space.</p>
<p>While she’s doing this, she freaks out on international TV and starts talking about how she feels like Job, and Satan is aboard the ship and….at that moment, Wassenfelder jumps in claiming to be the devil, and snatches the camera away from her. He does a little standup routine about how he’s pranking everyone on the ship pretty much all the time, meanwhile, the others haul Paula off for a time out. Paula’s changed her opinion on Beta, saying that it’s evil because it won’t let her go to Venus.</p>
<p>Wassenfelder, by the way, is much more active than we’ve ever seen him before, friendly, outgoing, manic, and slightly paranoid - he’s stealing supplies to build a large 3-d representation of a hyperdimentional shape in his cabin, so that “The people on the ground won’t know what I’m doing.” He seems to get along all chummy with Paula, who even laughs at his lame jokes, he’s dancing in his cabin, and he gives Nadia a big, not terribly compelling speech about how she should put her reservations aside and just “Charge.”</p>
<p>The others have little to do in this episode, though Rollie and Jen have another tense discussion and are officially now in “Failing Marriage” State. On the way home, while Eve and Goss discuss who’ll be the member of the ground control to crack first and talk to the media, Rollie isn’t paying attention to what he’s doing, and runs over a girl on a bicycle, killing her. </p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>Is it just me, or is the name “Walker” a bit Dickensian? Because, you see, there’s little else to distinguish his character aside from the fact that he walked on Mars. I wonder if there’s more Dickensian stuff going on here. I suspect there is: “Zoe” is the greek word for Life; “Paula,” - as we discussed previously - is probably supposed to reference the Apostle Paul. “Rollie” just rolls with it. “Donner” = “Dawn-er” or one who’s there at the dawn. He’s also our narrator, which suggests that he’s the guy who sees the dawn of a new era. Are there more? Probably. </p>
<p>This episode evidently takes place just one day after the previous one. </p>
<p>Goss and Walker were apparently in the USAF together. And that’s about all we’re ever going to get on characterization for that guy, trust me.</p>
<p>“Arnell,” the limping ground controler/ex-AsCan, is clearly the one who’s going to crack, and his scene with AJ about fate vs. destiny was pretty good, not so much because of what it said, but because it plays a much-needed counterpoint to AJ’s continued blathering about fate and destiny. To wit: That’s all well and good for the guys on the mission, but what about those of us who sweated and fought for it, and got washed out? We never had a chance. Later in the episode, we see that Arnell now has a fake leg, hence the limp, and he’s obviously thinking that Beta was somehow personally responsible for that. Frankly, he’s probably right.</p>
<p>Speaking of which, Arnell’s leg seems rather primitive. If you look at how far prosthetic technology has improved in just the last 8 years (A grim benefit of the wars we’re fighting), and then extrapolate 43 years in to the future, it doesn’t make much sense. The guy might as well be hobbling around on a pegleg.</p>
<p>You know, I actually *like* the British reporter. He’s really more detailed than a lot of the main characters. He’s a Pulitzer-winning reporter who got exiled over a story he did on political corruption back home, cast out and forced to cover a space program that few give a damn about, and he’s desperate to reclaim his former glory. I like that he’s obviously got self-serving purposes in mind, but he’s not an unsympathetic or bad guy. When he takes care of AJ after his collapse, obviously he’s just trying to get an insider on the floor, but just as obviously he actually cares for the guy. His approaches to Arnell are a bit less well handled, but they make sense, and how cool is it to see a reporter who actually *acts* like a reporter for once?</p>
<p>Man, does this show have a sprawling cast, or what? Seriously: Evram (1), Jen (2), Donner (3), Nadia (4), Paula (5), Wassenfelder (6), Shaw (7), Zoe (8), all on the ship, and then there’s AJ (9), the flight surgeon chick (10), Eve (11), Goss (12), Rollie (13), Arnell (14), the English reporter dude (15) and Sharon (16) - that’s a huge cast for a show of this type. I love the whole “It takes a village to run a space mission” aspect of it, which we generally don’t see. Generally it’s just “Let’s go to Mars” - jumpcut - “We’re on Mars, gosh that was a rough nine months that we’re not going to bother to show you.” So: Mad props to the show for showing us all how complicated this kind of stuff is.</p>
<p>We see another flash of the Zoe/Donner dream. Does Zoe have a huge tattoo on her back that I somehow managed to miss before now? How did I miss this? Can anyone tell what it is?</p>
<p>It’s funny, after 10 episodes, I still haven’t gotten a good look at the Antares Mission Logo, but we get a really good look at the Mars Mission one: It’s a stylistic representation of “The Face on Mars,” which is funny, but probably not the sort of thing any *real* space agency would ever approve.</p>
<p>We don’t actually get a good look at the party identifications of anyone running for office, but it’s implied that incumbent “Jane Kendrick” is Republican (Given she’s the red candidate on the voting screen and the other one is blue). Not surprisingly, Paula - the one religious person onboard - votes for her. Jane wins a second term. Woo-hoo! Four more years! Four more years!</p>
<p>Speaking of Paula and “Woo-hoo,” is it just me, or was her ‘excited’ delivery in the lander like the worst of all possible line readings? Also interesting is that they apparently filmed the Lander scenes all in one block, because if you look close you can see that Zoe’s got a big zit over her left eye (Covered with makeup) that’s absent in all her other scenes in the episode. </p>
<p>Eve says that she knew all along that Alpha didn’t want Walker, but no one would listen, and as a result of that debacle, she’s more-or-less in charge of things now. How did she know? </p>
<p>Why can’t Jen see Beta or hear Gamma? Jen’s deterioration is interesting. As I said, she’s always been a pill, and I assumed this was just bad writing. You find that a lot in women characters in SF that are written by men. All too often, men write women’s parts simply by writing a man’s part, and then slapping a dress on it, by which I mean that all too often the only difference between Captain Janeway’s lines and Captain Kirk’s lines is the name on the script. This provides us with an endless array of allegedly strong, independent, intelligent, empowered female characters (Not that anyone who’s actually “Empowered” would ever use that word, it’s something that only the powerless say) who come across as bitchy or even dykish *because* the behavioral cues are all wrong. Women with authority are capable of the same exact things that men with authority do, and they actually *do* these things, but they enact their power in different ways than men do. Attempting to have them behave like dudes in dresses is just an embarrassment, and again, Trek is the worst offender in this regard. </p>
<p>I assumed that Jen was a case of this early on, she’s irritating, brash, bossy, didactic, self-righteous, annoying, bitchy, and frankly a pain in the ass. She wears her nationality on her arm as a shield, and this is believable because we’ve all met Canadians who do this, though with considerably more aplomb. (For the record, I’m half-Canadian on my Dad’s side. Non-practicing.) This kind of “Don’t confuse me with you war-mongering Americans” kind of behavior is what my dad calls “Ugly Canadianism,“ the counterpart to “Ugly Americanism.“ I think that fits Jen. Now that the show is progressing, and we’re seeing her character start to deteriorate, I’m having a whole new regard for the writers, since things that irritated me early on about her are now coming out as serious character flaws. Well done, guys! </p>
<p>Paula’s mercurial vacillation on whether there be angels or devils is a bit more superficial than the rest of the character’s qualms, but given the long-range plan for Jen, I’ll hold off judgment for now: they might have something up their sleeves.</p>
<p>We’re told that the ship is 25 million klicks from earth, which is 15,534,279 miles. It should take 83.5 seconds for a signal from Earth to get to the ship, but of course they dispense with that in this show. </p>
<p>The ampoules of Vodka the Russians sent along was a nice touch. Reminds me of a similar incident during the Apollo/Soyuz mission of ‘75.<br />
Holy crap, I totally did not see that car accident coming, did you? Caught me completely off guard and startled me, and I have to wonder what they’re going to be doing with this. Rollie’s already in a bad place, and no doubt Jen will manage to make it all worse somehow. Geez!</p>
<p>All the flashbacks in this episode were ten years earlier, during the ill-fated Mars expedition. Frankly, they were a huge disappointment: They didn’t add anything we didn’t already know, and they were more of a distraction than anything else. Generally the flashbacks on this show run from about 1/4th to ½ of the running time, but the Mars scenes were much less than that this time out, I presume because there was so little material of significance in ‘em. Without the flashbacks, and without much of an “A” story, this episode ended up feeling pretty padded out and trivial. </p>
<p>Now that they’re actually in Venus orbit, however, I’m sure next week will be better. </p>
<p>Mad props to nwkeys01 for finding the episode for us, and you can watch it online here <a href="http://www.megavideo.com/?d=YZMGNQBZ">http://www.megavideo.com/?d=YZMGNQBZ</a></p>
<p>Oh, hey, if you like the show, or you know someone who does, please make sure they're aware of our reviews up here on the 'bot, ok? Spread the word!</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/doomed-shows">Doomed Shows</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:14:30 +0000Republibot 3.0985 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Eve Ate The Apple” (Episode 9, Not broadcast in the US)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Ceve-ate-apple%E2%80%9D-episode-9-not-broadcast-us
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, September 21, 2009 - 14:49</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>As anyone reading this knows, the network has more-or-less abandoned “Defying Gravity,“ and made a hokey announcement that episode 8 was the “Season Finale,“ when in fact there’s at least four more episodes in the can. I’d asked our foreign readers to pitch in, but so far no dice. In the meantime, astute Republibot-in-Training “nwkeys01” actually found the episode online. Special thanks, man (I assume). We will now all pause for 15 seconds to sing your praises.</p>
<p>My original intention was to review the episode for some dead space on the site in November, but as my intended content for today turned out to be illegally infringing on someone else’s property (And again, guys, sorry about that, and thanks for letting me know), I’ve had to take it down. Then I got to thinking, “Well, what the hell? Why not review it? We were damn near the only website in the ‘States bothering to cover the show before, now we can be the *only* one covering it! Woo-hoo. If you, the reader, would like to watch it *before* reading my review, go here <a href="http://www.casttv.com/shows/defying-gravity/eve-ate-the-apple/zrto7z">http://www.casttv.com/shows/defying-gravity/eve-ate-the-apple/zrto7z</a></p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2017 - Eve is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.</p>
<p>2021 - Eve, age four, picks up one of her dad’s violins and composes a song on the spot. Her dad proclaims her a prodigy - he’s a musician himself - and teaches her the classics. She continues to play her first song pretty much every day. After a short, but promising career in New Orleans, Eve is accepted to Julliard, and moves to New York as a ‘tween, she barely sees her family, but she has a bright future ahead of her. </p>
<p>2033 - Hurricane Ophelia strikes New Orleans and the city is devastated in pretty much the same way as it was with Katrina in 2005 and Betsy in 1965. Eve’s family is killed. Eve is devastated, and refuses to ever play violin again.</p>
<p>2038 - Eve is now a member of the American Crisis Corps, and she’s part of the relief efforts in Nazca, Peru, where there have been massive floods and landslides and loss of life. Meanwhile, a Bertrand Corporation radio observatory notices some focused signals coming from a specific location on Mars - Gusev Crater ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusev_crater">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusev_crater</a> ) - which is being beamed specifically at Nazca, Peru. The observatory techs name the Martian source “Alpha” and the Peruvian receptor “Beta,” and quickly realize that Beta is actually responding.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Peru, Even is having a hard time adjusting to the high altitude, she’s having a hard time breathing, sleeping, eating, whatever. She’s on the edge of exhaustion. One night, while not able to sleep, she hears a violin playing *her* tune on a plateau in the distance, though no one else can hear it. She wanders off alone, climbs the plateau, then walks across the top of it to an unmarked spot where the hallucinatory sound is overwhelmingly loud, and she starts digging. At just that moment, helicopters and military-looking goons (Who may not actually be military) show up, arrest, and interrogate her. Whoever they are, they’re working for the Bertrand corporation, and they clearly don’t believe her story until she tells them about the music. Then they have her show them where the sound is coming from, and dig up “Beta” - a golden, glowing, fractal kind of blob-thing that just sorta’ hovers there. The Goonsquad commander tells Eve to go back to her camp and forget all about this, and tell no one about it, with an implicit threat in his words. She hastily retreats.</p>
<p>Back at camp, Eve is even worse off than before, distracted, depressed, relentlessly exhausted, unable or unwilling to eat. It becomes apparent that she’s probably dying by degrees, and she speaks of feeling like a part of herself was missing. After several days or weeks of this, the goodsquad commander shows up and asks her to come with him: “Beta” is dying, and while they don’t know what the hell it is, or why it’s dying, their eggheads suspect it’s because she’s not there with it. She goes, and from then on, she’s in the Betram corp.<br />
2042 - A manned mission to Mars lands in Gusev crater, to retrieve “Alpha“ and bring it to earth. The crew - or at least most of them - are not informed of the true purpose of their mission. Donner, Shaw, and Goss, Donner’s girlfriend, and a red shirt are involved, and as we all know, the girlfriend and red shirt both die.</p>
<p>2047 - the Ascans for the Antares mission are introduced to the media for the first time, and told to play it cool, since the media is evil. Shaw and Donner are told by Goss to keep out of the spotlight, and Eve concurs, but confides that she thinks the two of them are the best choice for the mission, no matter what Goss thinks.</p>
<p>2048 - Eve and Shaw marry. Donner is best man.</p>
<p>2052 - 38 million kilometers from Earth, the crew defy orders and go in to Beta’s room. They open a special hatch, and see the a golden, glowing, fractal kind of blob-thing that just sorta’ hovers there. Jen, like Londo Molari before her, sees nothing, however. Eve tells her story, both to the Antares folk, and to the ground control folk who happened to be on hand when the crew disobeyed orders. Donner notices that there’s other containment units just like Beta’s, and Goss admits their mission is to pick up all the Betaoid whatzits from all the planets on their flight plan. </p>
<p>The crew react in varying ways - Nadia is increasingly freaked out, Zoe feels life-affirmed, Donner is a bit perplexed, Shaw is happy to have it off his shoulders, Wassenfelder is entirely-too-enthused, Jen is a bitch, Evram is struggling to understand, and Paul goes in to hyper religious flight-or-fight mode. Beta, meanwhile, starts communicating - by whale song, apparently - with “Gamma” on Venus, which they can hear. Paula equates this with the horn of judgement, and quotes Jeremiah 25:30 saying this is the last sign before The Rapture. </p>
<p>Evram notes that his hallucinations had to do with guilt or shame, and asks if the others did as well. Jen didn’t have any, and Paula won’t admit to any shame because she’s forgiven of her sins, but everyone else - including Eve on Earth - admits to it, and they ponder why Beta would choose shame as a form of communication.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back on earth, an Ascan washout with a limp - Arnell - who’s been getting a lot of lines in the last three episodes - is having a hard time dealing with this. AJ prattles on about some new agey ancient astronaut twaddle, and the English reporter dude hits Arnell up for info about what’s going on, but Arnell won’t tell him anything. Meanwhile, everyone who happened to be on duty during Donner’s “Mutiny” now have level 12 clearance, way-high above Top Secret.</p>
<p>Still trying to figure out what the hell is going on, Donner eventually realizes their landing site on Mars is the place his girlfriend died, and realizes what that entails. Jen, meanwhile, goes nuts and cuts down all the tomatoes in a fit of atheistic pique.</p>
<p>The End.</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>I know it doesn’t matter, but if they’re 38 million klicks from earth, that’s 23,612,105 miles. It should take about 127 seconds for a radio signal to get to the Antares from earth, and an equal time for the reply to get back here again. About four and a quarter minutes round trip. Though they’re ignoring the light speed lag, as of this episode, they *have* put a bit of static in the vid-com.</p>
<p>Jen and Shaw have been feeling more than a little betrayed by their spouses’ withholding information, and Jen has made it clear that she’s still attracted to Shaw. Assuming the show continues, I don’t think it’ll be too long before those two start knocking space-boots.</p>
<p>“Paula” is the feminine form of “Paul,” who was, of course, the man who spread Christianity through the Roman Empire. “Morales” sounds a lot like the English word “Morals.” Coincidence? I think not. It’s interesting that Paula’s religious freakout is viewed as a source of annoyance, but everyone was pretty understanding of AJ’s similar freakout in the first episode. Ok, I don’t mean “no one bugged AJ about it” - obviously a major plot arc revolved around resolving that. What I mean is that the candor of the episodes suggested that AJ was merely stressed, while Paula - who’s also merely stressed - is being made out to be kind of a pain in the ass for basically doing the same thing. </p>
<p>Jen’s inability to see anything is interesting. She’s keeping that secret, too. I’ve long disliked her character as long on ‘me too’ liberalism and short on an actual personality apart from bumper sticker philosophy, but it might be that I’m *supposed* to think that - maybe there’s really something wrong with her, which is why she can’t see Beta. Or maybe it’s just her utter lack of faith in anything? </p>
<p>What is Beta? Is it an alien? A natural form of life? The first life? What? Why are analogues of it on or near the other planets? What are they trying to do by bringing them together? Is this supposed to make things better, or are they trying to assemble Exodia, The Forbidden One, or what? Seriously: do they have a reason to think getting the band back together is a good thing, or are they risking super-voltron for no reason here? The “Leap of faith” comment (Used apparently incorrectly, btw) makes me think they’ve got no clue beyond Kier Dullea saying “Something Wonderful” a lot. </p>
<p>Did Goss know the true purpose of the Mars Mission? Well of course he did.</p>
<p>What are Beta and the others talking about?</p>
<p>There seems to be some technical confusion on “Gamma.” Heretofore, when they use this term, it’s in conjunction with hallucinations and whatnot, and they’re obviously talking about Gamma Waves in the brain. This isn’t a form of radiation, it’s simply a kind of wave form. In this episode, however, they repeatedly said “Beta emits low-level Gamma” in such a way as to clearly imply the writers think Gamma Waves (Which everyone has) and Gamma Radiation (Which turns David Bruce Banner in to the Hulk), though they’re not even remotely related.</p>
<p>Gee, the goonsquad commander had an odd voice, didn’t he? Something about the way he said “My God” when he saw Beta kind of telegraphed the idea that Beta might be some hokey SF equivalent of God, or at least god-lower-case-g. Nwkeys01 has said he thinks it’s Gaia. That’s a valid theory. If so I’d assume the concept is to reassemble the bits of Gaia, and then haul the Cosmo-DNA back from Iscandar to heal the earth, or some such hokum. In fact, I’m kinda’ sure that’s it, but I do hope I’m wrong because that’s just so damn clichéd, stupid, and anti-intellectual.</p>
<p>Another thing that seemed telegraphing stuff is when Donner says Nadia is “Beautiful and smart” and when Nadia says she wants to see how far “Man” can go. Consensus seems to be that her hallucinations indicated she used to be a dude. I’m icked out by this, but we’ll see if it’s true or not.</p>
<p>In a groan-inducing bit of New Agey twaddle, we’re told that Beta is burried beneath the Nazca lines ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines</a> ) Despite the fact that perfectly rational explanations for these things have existed for a very long time, aggressively ignorant people persist in parroting the Eric von Danikin view that this things are landing strips for UFOs. The “Vimanas” that AJ talks about from Indian Sanskrit Epics have similarly been co-opted by UFO nuts to “Prove” (With no evidence) that flying saucers, or at least airplanes visited earth in the antediluvian past ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana</a> )</p>
<p>Wassenfelder’s babble about fractals being the language of the universe fits in with this. Fractals *are* extremely important in nature, but when the scope of fractalization - it permeates everything - began to be discovered in the early 90s, there was a ton of crazy New Age fascination with it, attaching mystical significance to the organization of seeds in a sunflower and whatnot. This of course ties in to his fascination with the Fractalized Tomatoes from last week, and explains the spacescape-made-of-fractals in the opening credits of every episode. I’d been wondering about that. Wassenfelder still reminds me of Owen from Total Drama Island, by the way. </p>
<p>Still and all, not a bad episode. A lot of stuff got revealed, and the show zagged when it should have zigged. I totally did not see this coming. </p>
<p>Be sure to watch it at the link above, and then check back in to tell us what you thought of it! And again: All hail nwkeys01</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/ancient-astronauts">Ancient Astronauts</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/new-agey-crap">New Agey Crap</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:49:33 +0000Republibot 3.0944 at http://www.republibot.comDEFYING GRAVITY: "Not Dead, Just Pinin'..."http://www.republibot.com/content/defying-gravity-not-dead-just-pinin
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - 06:52</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Neorandomizer has pointed out the following story from The Futon Critic about the state of Defying Gravity</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;&gt;LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- Let the speculation end: ABC's "Defying Gravity" is still very much alive.</p>
<p>Nicole Marostica, the show's publicist for the network, has confirmed the Alphabet hasn't pulled the plug on the show and is still mulling scheduling options going forward.</p>
<p>Due to its late start this summer, ABC didn't have the real estate to air all 13 installments from its first season. "Gravity's" shortened run was made clear from the start: the network announced back on July 22 "Brothers &amp; Sisters" would return to its Sunday, 10:00/9:00c slot on September 27, leaving "Gravity" just eight weeks of potential air dates.&lt;&lt;&lt;</p>
<p>The July 22nd "Story" isn't really a story per se, nor anything specific about Defying Gravity, it' simply a list of 'start' dates for various fall shows. There's not even any mention of DG, it just happens to mention that its particular slot will be filled up on a particular date by another show, as you can see here<br />
<a href="http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=20090722abc02">http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=20090722abc02</a></p>
<p>FC goes on to mention (As we've commented here ourselves) that<br />
&gt;&gt;"Gravity" nevertheless has been a lackluster performer at best - last night's airing drew just 2.52 million viewers (including a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49), making it the least-watched program on the four major networks.</p>
<p>No indication was given as to when the show will return.<br />
&lt;&lt;&lt;</p>
<p>What this boils down to is that the show isn't officially cancelled, it's in "Hiatus" which simply means "It's a dead show, but we'll probably burn off the remaining episodes in the summer, then we'll formally cancell it."</p>
<p>Thanks to Neorandomizer who brought this to my attention, and the original story is here if you care to read it <a href="http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=8293">http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=8293</a></p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/news">News</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:52:15 +0000Republibot 3.0918 at http://www.republibot.comDEFYING GRAVITY: An Appeal to our International Readershttp://www.republibot.com/content/defying-gravity-appeal-our-international-readers
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, September 14, 2009 - 13:22</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>It just occured to me that the "World Wide Web" is called that because it's "World Wide" (Well, duh). Now, I'm not assuming that a website called "Republibot" is probably going to have much to attract people from a lot of different countries, most of which are far more liberal than the US, but we *Do* manage to get a fair ammount of international traffic. </p>
<p>For instance, in the last week, we've gotten 178 Canadian visitors to our site, 122 Brits, and 38 from Germany. Not boffo numbers by any means (We've had about 1780 visitors from within the US in that same period), but it's substantial. Canadians make up about 6% of our daily traffic, and while most of our visitors come from "The Anglosphere," we get visitors from elsewhere as well.</p>
<p>"Defying Gravity" has been cancelled here in the 'States, but - that damn song to the contrary - we are *not* the world, and a lot of you live in places where the show is still running. </p>
<p>If you live in Canada, the UK, or Germany, we would *love* to have you review the remaining episodes of "Defying Gravity!" </p>
<p>Why would you want to do this? Well: It's easy; it's not terribly time consuming; you'd be providing benevolent assistence to your poor American compatriots who love the show, but have had it wrongfully snatched from us by the blinkered philistine pig ignorance of our broadcast networks; and on top of that, it's kind of fun to know your words are being read and discussed by hundreds of people you don't know. My review for the episode "Love, Honor, and Obey" has been up for about thirteen hours now, and has been read by more than 150 people. It's a gas, I tell ya'! It's a great way to give yourself an ego boost and feel like you're really special (Even if you're like me, and not at all special)</p>
<p>So who wouldn't want that? If you're interested in doing it, please let us know, either by Email or in the contents here.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, it really wouldn't be a bad idea for us to have a few foreign correspondents anyway. There've got to be shows and movies and various SF functions that take place in Germany, England, Australia, Canada, Japan, China, and other places that never get any notice in the 'States. It would be good for us to be able to cover some of that. </p>
<p>But for now, right at this moment, we'd love someone to cover "Defying Gravity" for us. Will you be that someone? Please? I promise it won't hurt. You know...much...</p>
<p>(NOTE: Promises are not legally binding)</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/requests-readers">Requests For Readers</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:22:53 +0000Republibot 3.0916 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEWS: Defying Gravity: “Love, Honor, Obey” (Episode 8)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-reviews-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Clove-honor-obey%E2%80%9D-episode-8
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, September 14, 2009 - 00:09</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Curiously, while settling in to watch the show tonight, the announcer very clearly declared this to be the “Season Finale” of Defying Gravity. Now, I know for a fact that they shot 11 episodes of this show, and I know it’s been bleeding ratings since day one - the lowest ratings the show ever got was for the H2IK episode, which came in 34th place for the week, the highest they’ve ever done was the pilot, which came in at 21st for the week, which would be fairly lame during the season, but we’re in the dog days of summer here - there’s no competition. A new show - any new show - should be sucking up the ratings, give it’s running against…well…nothing whatsoever.</p>
<p>Hence, it comes as no surprise that this show was doomed. Really, it was doomed at the outset: Science Fiction aimed at chicks? Scandalous! Stupid! Every bit as doomed as Kings was earlier in the year. Even so, announcing a “Season Finale” when you’ve got three more episodes in the can is…well, it’s a bit confusing, really. Normally the networks just yank the show with little fuss, then burn off the remaining episodes in some other dead slot, but pretending the story had reached its intended climax is…well…it’s damn peculiar.</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY </p>
<p>2047 - The day after Halloween, the Ascans (Astronaut Candidates) are subjected to obedience training intended to teach them to follow orders without hesitation. This mostly consists of running a lot of laps, and doing what a bitchy, sour faced old Nazi of a woman tells them to do. Eve explains that she’s a rep from a major financial backer for the Antares expedition, and as such she’s got a role in crew selection. She tells Donner that the people he left behind would never have survived to reach the lander, but Donner doesn’t believe it. Goss gives another wad speech, and then the old woman has everyone play a really vicious game of Simon in which the player gets shocked. Curiously the Catholic girl, Paula Morales, was evidently the only one to make it through this obstacle. Interesting. And possibly funny, I’m not sure. Then the sour faced old Nazi changes the rules whereby Simon now shocks some innocent person. Woo-hoo total lack of empathy! Then there’s a fire alarm, and everyone scrambles through the smoke to the fire escape, but Jen goes back to rescue straggler Zoe, and it turns out the whole thing is just an exercise. They’re declared dead and fail. It’s all kinda’ useless as these lost backs go.</p>
<p>2052 - The day after Halloween, the Antares is six days away from Venus. No one is really buying the “Drugged Halo” excuse for various reasons - no one except Jen, who, of course, is annoying. Nadia, for instance, was hallucinating like crazy, but has never worn a halo. Donner discusses it with Shaw, who, as usual, won’t confess anything. Zoe discusses her dream with Jen, but we get curiously little reaction from all this. Zoe and Donner decide to investigate further, and follow Zoe’s hallucinatory cries to Storage Bay IV, AKA “Beta’s Barn.” They try to get in, but can’t, so they ask Paula what’s in the bay, but it seems to be nothing unusual. Shaw shows up to shut them down, and a lengthy argument ensues, with Shaw admitting there’s something classified in there, but refusing to violate orders and go in to check it out, regardless of the safety of his crew.</p>
<p>The solar flare alarm goes, a massive wave of radiation is six minutes away, so the crew shuts down everything that can get EMP-fried, and head to the shelter. Jen - because she’s annoying - dashes back to rescue her damn bunny, and they can’t make it to the shelter in time, so they have to find protection elsewhere. Meanwhile, the bulk of the crew in the Solar Flare Shelter discuss Schrodinger’s Cat, and whether or not they’ll get cancer in 30 years as a result of this. The all-clear sounds, and everyone - even the girls - are fine because there was no flare: Goss just decided to stage an unscheduled drill to distract Donner and Zoe from Beta’s Barn. Ooooh, dick move!</p>
<p>Meanwhile, all the tomatoes have grown in to a fractal garden, which they realize has to have something to do with whatever the hell is in Pod IV, so they ignore Goss, and Shaw ignores Eve, and they go down and open the bay. A light shines out, and most everyone stares in amazement at something we’re not allowed to see. They mostly look beatified, excepting Jen who looks every bit as blank as when Londo Molari saw a Vorlon in the buff, and Donner who looks…well…like he’s sizing it up.</p>
<p>THE END.<br />
(Presumably forever)</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>The torture/training stuff was complete crap. No space program in the world uses, nor have they ever used, anything like that. It’s ridiculous. They go to extreme lengths to establish team identity and esprit d’corps, not destroying it by games of “Torture the doctor.”</p>
<p>Not sure if Paula just shaking off the torture was supposed to show how strong she is, or how much punishment she’s willing to take. Not sure if it was intended to be inspiring, funny, sad, or creepy. It managed to be a bit of all of those.</p>
<p>We’re never told why the two ghosts of Mars were gonna’ kack, only that they were. What was the problem? Why were they dying? It appears that Eve isn’t lying, that they actually were, but a very simple method of checking would simply be to look at the space suit telemetry from the 2042 mission: Even if the lander stranded them, their suits would keep them alive for at least several more hours. If telemetry says they died a lingering, horrible death by suffocation, screaming “Damn you to hell, Donner” the whole time, then obviously Even is lying. If, however, they were dead inside of ten minutes, she’s telling the truth. Why hasn’t anyone suggested this?</p>
<p>I really liked the way AJ and Donner were conspiring together over the radio. I totally *loved* the way AJ was pretending to push buttons without actually hitting them and lying, so that he could defy Goss’ orders without getting nailed for it. I also loved the little bit of face acting between him and Rollie when that was going on.</p>
<p>I didn’t like the Rollie/Eve scene, however. Goofy, boring, it added nothing. And is it just me, or did Rollie suddenly become kinda’ goofy looking?</p>
<p>Did Zoe get a haircut? She looks different to me somehow…</p>
<p>Wassenfelder and Paula seem to be getting along better now. Eventually they’ll be a couple, or they would have if the show continued. </p>
<p>Even though it’s a lie about them being tainted, no one on the ship is using Libido Suppressants anymore. Nadia never used ‘em. Ha!</p>
<p>Nadia is second in command. I don’t think they ever mentioned that before. </p>
<p>I liked the locker room scene between Donner and Zoe - “I thought we talked all this out last night.” “Yeah, we did, but you were pretty drunk so I didn’t know how much of it you’d remember.” Zoe’s rambling was kinda’ cute, too.</p>
<p>And I guess that is that, kids: The fat lady (Presumably a pregnant Zoe) has sung. We don’t know what Beta is, or why he’s there, we don’t know what he’s doing, or why, or how he got there. We don’t know why the Mars-o-nauts were dying, we don’t know why they’re going to Venus, we don’t know if Paula will be able to fly it. We don’t know why the computer kept defaulting to the 3rd landing site, we don’t know who Nadia’s hallucination was, frankly there’s a ton of things we don’t know.</p>
<p>I’ll rent the series when it comes out on DVD and review the final three episodes, and I suppose that’ll be the end of it.</p>
<p>As some of you may recall, this was a multinational television project: Canada, the US, UK, and Germany all coughed up considerable cash to fund this bomb. I’m wondering if it being cancelled in the states means the show is dead everywhere or not, since our network signed on late to the project. </p>
<p>It’s a shame. It was never a great show, but I liked it, and it was getting better. It was cleverly built, if not brilliantly plotted, and I’m annoyed that we’ll never get to find out what the hell the point of all this was. </p>
<p>The End. (Not really, but it’s “The End” enough for our purposes)</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/series-finales">Series Finales</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/season-finales">Season Finales</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:09:30 +0000Republibot 3.0914 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Fear” (Episode 7)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Cfear%E2%80%9D-episode-7
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, September 7, 2009 - 00:05</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Whole lot o’ hallucinating going’ on tonight. I suppose I could kvetch about them doing a Halloween episode in September, but then the Simpsons have been doing Halloween episodes in December for more than a decade now. I guess I’m used to it. That notwithstanding, however, I’m not sure how I feel about this episode, it’s a bit to character-heavy, and a bit too “Out of Gas” (Firefly reference) coming right on the heels of some other character-heavy episodes. There’s not a lot of plot or narrative momentum here, and what there is feels kinda’ fake, kinda’ tedious, like all those “Ship in danger” subplots from TOS.</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2042 - On Mars, a really bad dust storm has blown in. The landing party is only 100 meters from the lander when it takes off and strands them. Something is wrong with the two that got left behind, however…</p>
<p>2047 (Halloween) - Eve has a ‘pulse’ - a hallucinatory telepathic event precipitated by “Beta.” Her temperature spikes, she has visions. In Beta’s audience chamber, she sees Shaw on mars mission, and decides Beta wants her to talk to him.</p>
<p>Zoe is back at work, getting stared at, and putting on a brave front, telling people she’s in no pain, she’s fine, having a hysterectomy is no big deal. AJ tries to tell her something, however, and she snaps at him. He beats a hasty retreat. Jen is debating whether she’ll be a slutty pirate or a slutty vampire, “Either way, fishnets.”<br />
Zoe: “Ted likes fishnets?”<br />
Jen: “All guys do. It’s genetic.” (It’s true, you know) Eve approaches Ted to try and figure out why Beta wants her to talk to him. She tells him that she’s lost someone, just like he did when they meet for drinks. Zoe plans to just go home and quietly recuperate, but Nadia’s passive/aggressive faux concern pisses her off, so she decides to go to Major Toms to meet up with the others. Jen finds out that Ted is dressing up as “Dr. Ra” from some unnamed science fiction show, so she decides to go as an alien communications babe from the same show. Alas, Ted is drinking with Even, and stands her up. Zoe, meanwhile, dresses up as a pregnant astronaut. She gets massively drunk, pitches a fit at Donner, creates a scene, then pukes. After some awkwardness about who should do what, AJ takes her home. There he tells her he knows all about the abortion, but it’s ok ‘cuz her path is in space and the baby’s path is elsewhere, and, y’know, abort as many fetuses as you want ‘cuz they’re just going to be reincarnated anyway, right? Right? Am I right? Grrrr.<br />
Eve tells Shaw that based on her pouring over the telemetry from the 2042 mission, the two folks they abandoned would never have survived the last thousand feet of their journey…</p>
<p>2052 (Halloween) - a candy company has paid $10 billion to have the crew of the Antares film a candy commercial 35 million klicks from earth. No one - excepting the candy company - are particularly thrilled over this notion, but money’s money. Alas, on earth, Eve is feeling a Beta Pulse coming on, and the crew of the ship are showing signs of it, too. Eve warns Shaw, but tells him not to tell the others, even though they both now know that several of them are having Beta-Hallucinations, and other members of the crew are definitely off their game. Roy Shaw, the child of Eve and Ted, is 4 years old, and he’ll be trick-or-treating as Dr. Ra, but he’s afraid of the dark. </p>
<p>They cook up a cover story saying a tainted batch of HALOs are causing them to have psychotropic trips, and ground control tries to scrub the commercial, but the candy company and the crew put up a fuss, so they try to do it anyway. The commercial entails an EVA with the astronauts carrying candy buckets. Basically they’ll fly in to position, open a banner with the candy company logo on it, and say “Trick or Treat” - the end. Seeing his dad freak out on TV, Roy Shaw gets scared, and doesn’t want to go trick or treating.</p>
<p>As they try to exit the ship, Shaw is paralyzed by his Martian Storm vision, Donner is seeing his dead girlfriend, Zoe is hearing baby cries, and everyone is going to hell Jen remains unaffected, and tries to get them to go outside, but Donner scrubs it. As soon as they’re back inside, everyone is feeling better, and the money they didn’t make from doing the commercial will come out of the science budget for the mission. Zoe thanks Donner for keeping them inside, and they both admit that they’re happy the others are along. Zoe confides in him about the dream she’s been having - going naked out the airlock - and as she’s telling it to him, he basically cuts in and tells her the rest of her dream. He’s been having it for two months.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t have anything to do with tainted HALOs, does it?” Zoe asks.<br />
“No,” Donner realizes.</p>
<p>Back on earth, Roy Shaw - a timid and nervous kid - can’t bring himself to go Trick or Treating with the other kids, but he is at least going around Mission Control. </p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>Of course we’ve long established that they’re just ignoring light speed lag in communications on this show, but I like to keep track of these things. They say they’re 35 million kilometers from earth, which is 21,747,991 miles. Light travels at 186,000 MPS, or about 12 million miles a minute, so the communications lag *should* be about 117 seconds each way. Ergo, Jen’s little “I thought you said you were going to wear a mask” exchange with Rollie back on earth should have taken about 3.8 minutes.</p>
<p>Donner says he’s been having the dream for about two months, he started having ‘em only a day or two before he ended up replacing AJ on the mission, so that suggests they’re about 56 to 62 days out from earth, which suggests an average speed of between 350,000 and 390,000 miles a day, or lets say around 15,400 miles an hour. That’s actually just about right for interplanetary transit speeds. Kudos to the producers for figuring that out.</p>
<p>Of course this is a bit confusing, since in the second episode Mike Goss said that Shaw could tell the crew what the true nature of their secret mission is ‘In 47 days, when they go in to orbit around Venus.’ Obviously, they’re still well away from Venus, so I’m going to just chalk that up to a typo, or whatever. </p>
<p>Eve mentions that she’s lost someone just like Shaw has. Her hallucinations would seem to indicate she had a young child that died years before, or possibly both a husband and a child. We can’t say for sure what happened, but I got a sense of a car accident out of it. </p>
<p>Paula hallucinated about her dog, Hector, who looked to have been hit by a car. </p>
<p>Evram hallucinated about the girl from the war again. </p>
<p>Nadia kept seeing someone she didn’t recognize on the ship, walking away from her. He looked a lot like Evram, but wasn’t Evram.</p>
<p>Jen and Wassenfelder appeared to be completely unaffected, Zoe, Eve, and Donner were affected, but still basically level-headed and functional, but Paula, Evram, and Shaw were utterly paralyzed by what they were seeing. </p>
<p>Why is Beta doing this? It seems like he was trying to prevent them from shooting the commercial, but why?<br />
Claire, the flight surgeon back on earth, is aware of Beta, and the hallucinations, and has evidently been so for some time. Goss knows, of course. Who else knows what’s really going on? Neither here nor there, but Claire’s demeanor and delivery reminds me heavily of Dr. Lam (Lexa Doig) from the last couple seasons of Stargate SG1, and of course though Lam was a completely different unrelated character, she was played by the actress that played “Andromeda” from Andromeda Ascendant. Dunno if this intentional or not, but I just wanted to mention it.</p>
<p>Huh. Mike Goss wasn’t a jackwad tonight. Not a little bit. In fact, he was almost cool.</p>
<p>The Antares is expected to be “Swinging by Mars” in about a year.</p>
<p>Ten Billion Dollars is a hell of a lot of money to pay for a candy commercial, don’t you think? I mean, even if we assume heavy inflation…geez. “Comet Candy” (Obviously supposed to be Mars Candies, Inc) must have deeper pockets than Bazooka Joe.</p>
<p>“Dr. Ra” is obviously a thinly-veiled analogue for Spock from Star Trek, what with the pointy ears, the stoic demeanor, and of course they substituted the secret heavy metal rock star devil sign for the Vulcan salute. That was actually kinda’ funny, really. Malik Yoba, who plays Shaw, gets some of his best scenes in this episode, and has some good lines, but unfortunately they’re hampered by that stupid alien monobrow he’s wearing as part of his “Ra” costume.</p>
<p>Zoë’s “Cursing” scene was pretty funny, actually.</p>
<p>What’s the deal with Nadia’s vision? She’s seeing someone she doesn’t recognize on the ship, and my hunch is that it’s in some way an allusion to Beta’s presence there.</p>
<p>As the Pregnant Astronaut, Zoe is - as Evram points out - pretty clearly over-compensating.</p>
<p>Man oh man oh man oh man did AJ’s little speech at the end piss me off. Up until now, we’ve been led to believe that AJ is a pretty religious Hindu. He even has a religious freakout in the first episode. In this episode, he gives a speech that is unmistakably pro-abortion, but as far as I know (And my knowledge is limited on this), most Hindus oppose the termination of pregnancy. Many oppose it under any circumstances ever, most oppose it unless the mother’s life is in danger, with a large number that would say it is bad, but allowable in some extreme circumstances, or so I’ve been led to believe. (Again, I may be wrong). Added to which, his little “Reincarnation makes it all better, the baby will just be born as an ocelot or something” justification kinda’ makes a mockery of both concepts, doesn’t it? I mean, where do you draw the line on that? “Well, yeah, 60 million people died in World War II, but they would have eventually died anyway, and now they can be bunnies! Woo-hoo!” That doesn’t strike me as the Hindu view of these matters (Though, again, not a Hindu, dunno for sure), it strikes me more like a dopey California attempt at “Spirituality.” You know, the kind of “I don’t actually belong to any religion or believe in God, per se, but I do like to sit on the ground with my friends and hum occasionally, and strip-mine the deeply meaningful beliefs of other cultures for my own shallow purposes.” That kind of thing. </p>
<p>If anyone out there reading this is a practicing Hindu, liberal or conservative, I’d actually like to know your take on this. It just felt wrong, somehow to me.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/halloween-episodes">Halloween Episodes</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:05:25 +0000Republibot 3.0902 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Bacon” (Episode 6)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Cbacon%E2%80%9D-episode-6
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, August 31, 2009 - 00:01</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>So here we are at the end of the first half of the season, and I find I’m much more invested in this show than I anticipated. Yeah, I’m not unaware of its failings, most of them related to the technical side of things, but I find I’m responding well to the very decompressed storytelling, the slow character arcs, the relaxed pace. It’s not ‘ohmigod the Prosthetic Forehead Aliens of planet Cliché VII are going to destroy civilization’ ever week, nor is it ‘ohmigod, the Prosthetic Forehead Aliens of planet Tedium X need to learn an important lession about life, taught in the most didactic way possible.’ Instead, it’s more workaday. I just sorta’ like that.</p>
<p>A lot of websites decried this series as “chick stuff’ or “Grey’s Anatomy in Space,” and the advance word was, of course, that this show was intended as a sort of “Gateway drug” to get women hooked on SF. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and I don’t know if it’s worked or not (I assume it wouldn’t), but I think a much more useful - and possibly unintentional - aspect of the show is that it might serve to introduce some of the more stereotypical male members of the audience (Trekies, I’m looking at you) to the concept that human drama isn’t a bad or scary or shameful thing, and that if you can fit it in with the gee gosh wow stuff, it just makes things better all around. So, if it’s intended as “SF 101” for chicks, or “Emotions 101” for mouth breathing dudes, I find I don’t really care either way, I’m just kind of digging the show.</p>
<p>That said, tonight was a pretty hard episode for me to watch, and I could definitely see a younger version of my self abandoning this series for ever after what they did tonight, but we’ll get to that below.</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2047</p>
<p>After stringing us along for two and a half weeks, Zoe takes the abortion pill. As fate and politically motivated scripts would have it, she happens to take it on the day that the cadets are doing a training section on trauma. They’re taken to a hospital and divied up in to groups. Some of the old timers take bets on when the notoriously vasovagal Donner will puke or black out. Paula and Wassenfelder are assigned to watch a druggie taking some new untraceable designer chemical, so they do, and of course they get to bickering, she calls him a poser, he calls her a religious fanatic. Wassenfelder gets along swell with the druggie, but Paula clearly has no sympathy for the guy.</p>
<p>Donner and Evram end up getting involved in a gunshot wound case, which the resident surgeon is botching because there’s so little gun violence in the future that he doesn’t know what to do. As the victim codes, Evram just takes over the surgery, and Donner assists, and he doesn’t pass out, though he’s clearly only barely holding it together.</p>
<p>The druggie codes, and the doctor can’t bring him back, but Paula won’t let it slide and does CPR on the guy for a while, just because there’s a chance. Claire, meanwhile, asks Evram out for a drink, and he says ‘yeah.’</p>
<p>Jen and Zoe don’t do much important, but Zoe talks to a pregnant doctor lady about regrets and choices (sigh), and the doctor excuses Zoe because she isn’t feeling well. Donner leaves, too. He gets to talking to her about a pig his uncle slaughtered when he was a kid, and therefore he can’t stand the sight of blood, and Zoe passes out, obviously in great pain. Donner picks her up and carries her back in to the hospital, where they immediately give her care, and Jen immediately fesses up to the pregnant doctor lady that Zoe took an abortion pill. AJ overhears this, but says he won’t betray her, and when things are better, he goes to tell Donner everything is ok.</p>
<p>When Zoe wakes up, Eve is there, telling she’s had an emergency hysterectomy, and that the cover story will be “you had a cyst that burst, and we removed it.” Everything is all nicely covered up.</p>
<p>2052</p>
<p>Evram is taking a blood sample from Donner, and having trouble doing it. It takes him six tries to hit the vein, and even though Paula was bugging him, that ain’t right. He tells Donner it’s a weird reaction of his pain meds for his back, lying, of course. Jen, meanwhile, enlists Zoe to help her birth her illegal rabbit. Zoe is obviously pissed at this, and the reasoning behind it appears to be lost on Jen. </p>
<p>AJ is allowed back on the floor. </p>
<p>Wassenfelder is being a wad, and picking on Paula for her faith, which she takes very seriously (Though last week gave us some reason to doubt some of her sincerity). Wassenfelder just can’t stand this, and is riding her pretty hard, so Shaw sends them both to the cargo bay to move some huge boxes around in the zero gravity. Of course Wassenfelder is a dick and pushes a box when Paula isn’t ready, the huge crate hits her, and cuts off her thumb. Wassenfelder sounds the alarm, then freaks out, but because Jen is playing ‘hide the bunny’ and Evram is having flashbacky problems, everyone is late getting to surgery.</p>
<p>Evram (Eventually) takes charge, and has Donner and Zoe help him out, but the situation quickly gets out of hand when the doctor starts having full-on flashbacks of the kid trapped in the collapsing building in the war. Presently he’s able to soldier through it, and with Donners’ help they basically re-enact the gunshot wound thing from a half-decade before, with Donner sticking his finger in the wound. Her life is saved.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Wassenfelder is in the cargo bay and finds Paula’s thumb, and rushes it to Evram just as he’s about to chop off the remaining stub. With super genius 21st century technology, she should regain full use of it by the next episode, or the one after that. </p>
<p>Nadia points out to Wassenfelder that he’s completely useless, but “Sometimes you find a thumb.” </p>
<p>Afterwards, Jen fesses up to Shaw that Evram’s been having flashbacks, and they confront him about it. He explains that during the war, he was in the army and called in a strike on what he thought was a rebel stronghold, but which turned out to be just a school full of kids. While trying to rescue the only one left alive, a beam collapsed on him. </p>
<p>The end. </p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a (foul-mouthed) Christian and a Republican, so I had a hard time with this episode revolving around Zoe’s abortion. There were a number of reasons for this: Firstly, my own moral indignation. Duh. Secondly, after stringing us along for five weeks, teasing us with what happened in the past, and throwing a couple of what seemed (To me) to be fakeout signals, she just kills the kid. They threw so many signals that she had an abortion in the previous 5 episodes, that I took it to mean it was all just misdirection. It’s 35 years in the future, after all: obviously, she didn’t have the kid, but just because there’s only two options available *today* doesn’t mean that will always be the case. I mean, travel used to be only by land or sea, right? Then we came up with air travel? So who’s to say there isn’t another option out there that will become available in the next generation, particularly given the obvious technological advances these people have. </p>
<p>My own personal favorite, the one I was betting on, was that she had the baby removed and put on ice for re-insertion at some more convenient time later on. They appear to have some limited suspended animation abilities in this world, so that should theoretically be feasible. Hell, it’s practically on the borderline of being feasible today to remove an embryo from one person and implant it in another, provided the recipient has been adequately hormonally prepared. Let me rephrase that: It is *not* possible to do that today, but it is an entirely plausible extrapolation of our present medical technology, and it’s an option that - with funding and research - could be available in 5 to 10 years. So there’s your third option right there. And if we can *ALMOST* do that, then how is it possible that 35 years down the pike, we *STILL* won’t have a third option? </p>
<p>So the conclusion of the baby arc runs very disappointing for me. I mean, this *is* a science fiction show, SF shows are all about ideas and showing us things that are on the edge of possible, or at least conceivable, about opening our minds up to change and stuff like that. It would have been a great way to introduce a solid - and thought provoking - SF concept that could have opened up a whole lot of interesting discussion and debate. I mean, would pro-abortion types oppose or support a third option? Has the concept ever occurred to them (Probably not)? If a third option were available, would they support it, or oppose it on the grounds that it might make their own stance less politically viable? Would conservatives accept such an option? We’re frequently known for opposing thing simply because they’re new, strange, ‘not what nature intended’ and so on, so the way the right would react to something like this is every bit as interesting as how the left would react: A lot of *US* would probably oppose the concept of postponing or transplanting unwanted pregnancies simply because such a thing is a hard concept to wrap your brain around, and it’s clearly not mentioned in the bible. I think such a stance would be a mistake, frankly. We’re talking about life and death here, and any time you can come up with an alternative that makes the ‘death’ option less of a certainty, that’s a victory, don’t you think?</p>
<p>So that’s what the show *COULD* have done, but instead they decided to make a political statement about…well, frankly, I’m a bit fuzzy on what they were going for here. Why they decided to declare fealty to something that’s been a fait acompli since 1973, I don’t really pretend to understand. We’re told that in 2052 Abortion is illegal in the US (Though evidently not Europe), and I guess they’re making the kneejerk “Keep it legal and safe” stance, but, really, why? Since Abortion became universally legal in the US (Under Richard Nixon, btw, not the demmycrats), there has never been any serious talk of delocalizing it again. Never. Political rhetoric on both sides stacking up to high heaven, yes, but actual organized political maneuvering to remove it? No. Not a bit. Reagan wrote a book about how he wanted to end abortion, and he appointed 3 supreme court justices during his term in office. He could have easily reversed Roe v. Wade if he wanted to, but he never, never, never attempted to do so. Why? Ultimately, it wasn’t a politically viable move. </p>
<p>And let’s assume that it *was* delocalized - let’s assume that it’s a compromise that Obama has to make to get his health program passed, and he gussies it up in some pretty words - that would never happen in a million years, but let’s assume it did: it would still be legal in the US under *State* law. Aside from maybe Utah, I can’t think of a state in the country that would actually move to criminalize it within their borders. Why? Again: Not politically a viable move.</p>
<p>So why the show strings us along for six weeks to show us 1973, rather than opening up the floor to new ideas, clever end-runs around the problem that the future might bring, they decided to make a heavy-handed statement that basically hasn’t needed to be made since Richard Nixon’s 2nd term. </p>
<p>I’m also annoyed that it was a girl’s club surrounding the abortion. All of them bend over backwards to cover it up, “It’s a stupid ol’ law,” endanger their careers and the program itself, not one of them says “No, dammit, this is wrong!” or “Wrong or right, you’ve screwed the pooch darlin’, and we ain’t endangering our careers for your sorry ass.” I know plenty of women who oppose abortion, I find it hard to believe the opinion would have been so solidly on her side, and on the side of ‘ignore the law.’</p>
<p>And it makes me think less of Zoe, and I really liked her, dammit. </p>
<p>So I’m fairly pissed off about that, if I’m honest. Their lack of vision has let us all down. And, yes, I am annoyed that I came up with a cleverer plot twist than the writers did. </p>
<p>Paula is from Jersey City, New Jersey. I had just assumed she was from Latin America, owing to her rather pronounced - but inconsistent - accent. I apologize. That was unthinking of me, but, you know, it *IS* an international crew. </p>
<p>Where is the ISO headquarters, anyway? They talk about “Heading down the coast,” but it’s never clear where they’re talking about. Wherever they are, it’s fairly clear they’re not in Texas, using the Johnson Space Flight facilities there. It looks like Cascadia, which is like the worst place in the world to launch something from, so where is ISO headquarters? It does seem to be near their launch facilities, but since the launches we’ve seen are at night, there’s no recognizable features. (I’m fairly certain the stock footage was from Vandenberg, though.)</p>
<p>Jen says her bunny is the first live birth in space. That’s not true. There’ve been literally scores of ‘em. The Soviets have been doing experiments with gestation in space since the earliest days of the Salyut program, and we did a lot of them on Skylab, both in the early 1970s. These always go very badly, by the way. Live births in space are possible, but horribly traumatic on the mother, owing to decalcification and blood flow problems, and the babies invariably are horribly deformed by developing in a weightless state. Duplicate spines are not uncommon, bone malformations, you name it. Bad mojo. </p>
<p>AJ is briefly in this episode after his conspicuous absence last week, however Rollie is conspicuously absent this time out. </p>
<p>The scene where Donner sees the blood on his hand and pukes outside the hospital was pretty funny, as was him getting hit by the door earlier. His narration, the title, and the whole ‘pig’ thing seem fairly extraneous, however. Yeah, I realize he’s the star, they’ve got a format that revolves around him, but it just seemed more like shoehorning this time out.</p>
<p>Evram has identified himself as having full-blown hallucinations. How long ‘til Shaw tells him about Beta? Why would Beta want Evram to hallucinate? Evram’s bit about never remembering the patients he saves, since there’s nothing to learn from them was pretty cool.</p>
<p>They can force-grow a new thumb in “About a month?” They can have a re-attached thumb working fine again inside of two weeks? Crazy! So we can prognosticate on trivial matters, but have to make disingenuous political statements to avoid going off the party line elsewhere? Disappointing. Disappointing. </p>
<p>So does anyone out there know how the ratings on this show are doing? I deem it highly unlikely that we’ll get a second season out of it, but I’d really like to know any specific numbers, if anyone’s heard anything.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/abortion">Abortion</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:01:23 +0000Republibot 3.0891 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Rubicon” (Episode 5) http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Crubicon%E2%80%9D-episode-5
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Monday, August 24, 2009 - 00:05</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The show has been steadily getting better. I know some people have criticized the show as it tends towards melodrama more than SF, but the fact of the matter is that they’re living on a space ship, and they’ve got a lot of time to kill. Whether you want it or not, you’re going to get a lot of melodramatic crap, just ask anyone who’s ever lived in a Co-Ed dorm. This week in particular, the scale tilts in favor of the soap opera stuff, rather than the more traditional skiffy stuff, but truth be told, I actually kind of liked it. We learn a lot more about the characters than we knew last week, the dynamics between them are building, and this felt like a nice intermezzo between the initial batch and whatever’s coming next.</p>
<p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2047<br />
Shaw and Jen are dating, more or less openly it seems. The Antares cadets get their comparative rankings to see who’s in the top of the program and who isn’t, and we’re reminded that there’s more than just 8 cadets, there’s a whole slew of ‘em in addition to the ones we’re following. While this has always been the case, we really haven’t seen the others since the episode where Wassenfelder almost drowned. Our main characters don’t do well. Jen places high, but Zoe is 28th on the ranking, and Wassenfelder is dead last. Shaw and Donner come in 12th and 13th respectively. They realize that Goss is screwing with the results, and go to confront him. “I’ve been on Mars.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I know, I was there.”<br />
“No, you were in the Zeus giving orders, I was actually on Mars, he was on Mars” [Points at Shaw.] “Now, I might be willing to tolerate second on that ranking because Ted Shaw is a hell of an astronaut, but there is no way in hell I’m thirteenth.”</p>
<p>Goss admits he’s handicapping them because he doesn’t want them on the mission, he doesn’t even want them connected to it. Too much baggage, he says, looking at Donner’s baseball. They leave. Eve, who was on hand for this, senses, something is wrong here, and pokes in to it. Donner heads back to his class, obviously upset, and can’t find the right materials. Finally, after flailing around looking for schematics for a while, he freaks out and hurls a baseball at the back of the room and storms out.</p>
<p>Zoe, meanwhile, is dejected about her position in the ranking, and contemplates leaving the program entirely, having the baby, and teaching high school geology or something lame like that. Jen keeps pushing her to have an abortion, and reluctantly she meets with a doctor. This is done on the sly, because, of course, abortion is illegal in 2047. He tells her that in Europe, only one woman in a thousand has a negative reaction to the procedure, but doesn’t actually say what the procedure is. She tells him she isn’t sure she wants to go ahead, he says ‘call me if you want to,’ and leaves.</p>
<p>While pondering what to do, Zoe’s mom shows up, just a shambling, alcoholic mess of a woman, railing on about astrology and her husband leaving her for a young lab assistant and blah blah blah. Zoe is frustrated by this, but her mom continues to auntie mame about the place with her outrageously bad plastic surgery and her outlandishly large nose and her entirely-too-young-for-her haircut. She’s a mess. She insists Zoe take her to Major Toms, so she does, and immediately embarrasses her daughter by introducing herself a s a friend and trying to do tarot readings in public. Zoe gets pissed and leaves.</p>
<p>Donner comes to the bar, and Zoe’s mom recognizes him. They get to talking and she gives him a tarot reading and talks to him about being haunted by his past. Then her husband calls and she leaves. Evram comes in and gives Donner back his baseball. Donner thanks him, and Evram says there’s a rumor that there were two astronauts dating against the rules. A few days before their mission, they went to a baseball game and the guy caught the ball, gave it to the girl. She took it with them to mars, and she didn’t make it back, and now the guy can’t bring himself to let go of it. Of course, that’s just the rumor. I might be wrong about it.<br />
“You are. She caught the ball, not me.”</p>
<p>Eve, meanwhile, goes to inspect the Mars Mission records, and finds that the official video has been modified to remove Mike Goss panicking and ordering Shaw and Donner to leave the others behind. </p>
<p>Rollie makes a badly fumbled pass at Jen, and she apologetically blows him off. He says it wasn’t a pass, he just wants to talk about cyanobacteria, which she wrote a paper on, and she apologizes. They head to the bar and talk about it all friendly like. Shaw comes to pick her up, and the two of them leave to have sex or whatever, and as soon as they’re gone, Rollie’s face falls. He’s crushing on her bigtime. </p>
<p>Donner goes to see his dead girlfriend’s mother, who clearly doesn’t want to see him. He tells her that he stole the baseball from her daughter’s things, and shouldn’t have, and gives it to her. “Why would you think I’d want that?”<br />
“Because it’s yours, it belonged to her, and meant something to her.”<br />
“Well, it means nothing to me.”<br />
His face falls, and he leaves, making a point of leaving the ball behind.</p>
<p>Zoe’s mom has figured out that Zoe’s pregnant, and asks what Zoe’s going to do. She admits she doesn’t know. It turns out that her dad isn’t leaving her mom, however, it’s just another of the woman’s periodic train-wreck freakouts. </p>
<p>Donner, feeling better about himself now that he’s let the ball - and all it represents - go, stops off at Zoes’ place and tells her not to quit the program, like her mom said she was thinking of doing. She asks why not, and he says, “Because you’ll make a great astronaut.” He leaves, and she smiles at this, then, hesitantly, she calls the doctor.</p>
<p>When he gets back to his apartment, he finds the ball in a box by the door. Reluctantly he takes it back inside. Meanwhile, Eve confronts Goss on what she’s seen, and demands that he stop handicapping Shaw and Donner. He reluctantly agrees, having no other choice.</p>
<p>Nadia, meanwhile, has been openly hitting on Donner the whole time, daring him to come by her apartment for some no-holds-barred no-strings sex. He finally gives in.</p>
<p>2052:</p>
<p>The Antares is now 30,000,000 kilometers from earth (18,641,135 miles) from earth, and they’re less than a day away from their “Point of No Return.” They need to make their final decision about whether they can go ahead with the mission, or if they head back to earth. They keep calling this their “Rubicon” point. Donner is still having hallucinations of the dead crew, but is mostly ignoring it, and playing with his baseball nervously. Rollie and Jen have an argument over the videophone about a stupid thing. Nadia is trying to seduce Donner, who hasn’t slept with her since before they left earth. </p>
<p>Shaw tells the crew that Goss is requiring them to have a Time Capsule - they each put in something that means a lot to them, it’s all about solidarity, sacrifice, teamwork, etc - and they’ll chuck it out of the ship at the Rubicon point. No one likes the idea. Paula, in particular, can’t bring herself to get rid of anything that she brought along. Wassenfelder makes fun of her about having a room full of religious stuff, and says “Your faith must be failing you if you need all this stuff to remind you of it.” She indignantly closes the door, but her face suggests that he’s right, she *is* having some kind of crisis of faith. Later on, we see her trying to decide which to get rid of and which to keep - a St. Somethingorother medal, or a collar belonging to her beloved dead dog, and the fact that both things mean the same amount to her is clearly bothering her. </p>
<p>Donner and Nadia are checking out the systems to determine if they’ll be go or no go at the Rubicon point, and the water purification system is showing sub-optimal. He and Shaw go to check it out. They open the first one, and Donner sees the tubes filthy with red martian dust. He ignores it, since the readouts all show optimal. They check all the other systems, and he debates telling Shaw about his problems, while Shaw more or less warns him not to tell him about his problems. Funny scene. None of the filters are going goofy, so Donner says “Just humor me,” and goes back to the one he saw soiled in halucin-o-vision, and tests the water. Sure enough, the PH is off, and sure enough, if he didn’t catch it, they’d all have been screwed. There’s no way Donner could have *Seen* the PH problem, it was invisible, but he won’t explain how he knew.</p>
<p>At the Time Capsule ceremony, everyone puts in something. Paula puts in her saint somethingorother medal, Evram puts in a medal he won during “The War,” Zoe puts in one of her mom’s tarrot cards, Wassenfelder puts in a girlie mag, and Donner drops in his baseball, and both Nadia and Zoe stare at him when he does, knowing full well what it means. Shaw chucks the capsule overboard through the airlock, then calls his wife and tells her about the filter thing.</p>
<p>They both realize - from the clues - that Donner is having hallucinations, but rather than be freaked out by this, they seem curious and somewhat relieved, like this kind of thing is commonplace from contact with Beta. Shaw wants to tell the crew, wants to tell Donner in particular, but Eve won’t let him. He sarcastically salutes and hangs up. Rollie contacts Jen and apologizes.</p>
<p>When he gets back to his room, Donner sees the damn baseball on his bunk. Shaw comes by and says “It occurred to me that the real point of the exercise was being willing to get rid of something that means a lot to you, not actually having to do it. So you all get to keep your stuff.”</p>
<p>“That’s not what Goss would have done.”</p>
<p>“Do I look like Goss to you?”</p>
<p>Donner suits up, takes the ball to the airlock, opens it, and pitches it in to the eternal night.</p>
<p>THE END</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>This is the first episode to spend more time on earth in 2047 than in space in 2052. While I found myself really enjoying it as a variation on a theme, I really don’t want them to do it again any time soon.</p>
<p>The scene between Donner and his girlfriend’s mom was very well played. When she rejected the baseball, the face acting from him is great, he honestly looks crestfallen, he honestly looks like he’s about to break in to tears. He looks only slightly less forlorn when the ball comes back in to his life.</p>
<p>I think it’s interesting that Donner has been carrying his girlfriend’s memory around with him for five years, but that he apparently desperately wanted to get rid of it the whole time, and tried repeatedly to do so. I mean, he actively gets rid of the fall four times in this episode, and it comes back to him three times. Will it come back a fourth? I certainly hope not. It would be really bad for him if it did. The baseball was a good metaphor for this, though, since the ball isn’t terribly obtrusive, and he’s been fiddling with it for a month now. It was nice to find out the significance of something we didn’t know had any significance until now, and it shows where this show has a lot of potential, taking little things like that and making them horribly important, and hiding them in plain sight. Well written all around.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how everyone else responded to getting their stuff back after they’d gone to the trouble of parting with it, but Evram in particular looked really unhappy to get his military decoration back. Shaken by it, in fact. </p>
<p>Among the Antares crew, it appears only Donner and Shaw have been in space before. Among the Antares crew, it appears that only Rollie wasn't a rookie, and Jen mentions his longest mission was only 34 days. That implies (A) that he's had more than one mission and (B) he's still way below Donner and Shaw on the totem pole, experience-wise. So in the flashbacks, Donner and Shaw are wearing blue jumpsuits, and the rest - including Rollie - are wearing red ones. I assumed this was to differentiate the experienced astronauts from the rookies, but evidently not. So what's the color difference mean, then? </p>
<p>This is the first episode not to have AJ in it at all, not in 2052 nor in 2047. There’s no explanation for his absence in either time period.</p>
<p>Of course we’ve already established that they’re just going to ignore the light speed time lag in this show, but if you’re interested, if they’re 18,641,135 miles from earth, as they say they are, it would take slightly more than 100 seconds for a signal from earth to get to the Antares and vice-versa. That means a simple “Hello Earth, how are you?” “We’re fine, Antares, how are you?” exchange would take 3.3 minutes. </p>
<p>In the previous episode, they were only 3,728,227 miles from earth. If they’re now more than 18,000,000 miles out, this episode must take place weeks or even months after the previous one. </p>
<p>Nadia claims she wants a no-strings relationship, but she actually seems increasingly jealous of Zoe. </p>
<p>The changes in Jen’s personality as they get further from earth are interesting. She was pushing Zoe to have an abortion on earth, and now she can’t bring herself to abort one of the rabbit embryos she’s been experimenting on. </p>
<p>They never actually *SAY* Zoe is having an abortion, and the doctor specifically avoids mentioning the name of “The Procedure” that’s being done in Europe. I think this is all one great big fakeout, as I said before. I don’t think Zoe actually had an abortion, I think she simply had the fetus removed and put on ice for re-implantation later. I’ve suspected this for some time - I mean, her name is “Zoe” fergoshsakes - it means “Life,” and there’s just no way for her to kill her kid and remain likeable in the context of the show we’ve seen so far - but her conversation with Donner about how he *eventually* wants a family, but not right now convinces me that I’m right. Her reaction was subtle, her posture mostly, and her smile after he leaves. I think that’s when she decided on an option, and I think a postponed pregnancy is the option she chose, rather than an actual termination of pregnancy.</p>
<p>So in 2047 the Great Barrier Reef is dead, and no longer entirely below water, and Cyanobacteria <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria</a> is effectively extinct in the wild. Rollie and Jen blame this on Global Warming, but this doesn’t make sense: if ocean levels are lower - which would seem to be what they meant by the Great Barrier Reef being no longer under water - that would seem to mean that there’s a new ice age going on. There would have to be in order to drop the oceans enough to put the reef substantially above water. Even if they’re being jocular, and it’s just a foot or so above water, you’re still talking about a major downturn in the earth’s temperature in order to freeze the hundreds of billions of gallons of water such a thing would require.</p>
<p>Nothing really moved forward much on the arc story involving Beta, or what their real mission is, but Shaw and Eve do now realize that Beta is in psychic contact with Donner, even though Donner himself doesn’t realize what’s going on. </p>
<p>And that’s it. Really looking forward to next week. I find I’m enjoying this show more and more. </p>
<p>EDIT 8/24/09: Astute reader nwkeys01 noticed that Jen's rabbit embryo was 27 days old, and nonexistent (As far as we know) in the previous episode, which strongly implies that this episode takes place a hair under 4 weeks after the last one. Since we're told it's 49 days to Venus from earth on this mission, that puts them not far away, even if the first batch of episodes all happened within a couple weeks. So they're not really that far from Venus anymore. Perhaps 20 days out, at the most, probably quite a bit less.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:05:05 +0000Republibot 3.0881 at http://www.republibot.comEPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “H2IK” (Episode 4)http://www.republibot.com/content/episode-review-defying-gravity-%E2%80%9Ch2ik%E2%80%9D-episode-4
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 23:57</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-author field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Republibot 3.0</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-ds-user-picture field-type-ds field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img class="image-style-none" src="http://www.republibot.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-3.jpg" alt="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" title="Republibot 3.0&#039;s picture" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>PLAY BY PLAY</p>
<p>2242:</p>
<p>On Mars, the Zeus lander is preparing to blast off to reunite with the Calliope command module in orbit. A sandstorm blows up, and because of it two astronauts on EVA are not going to make it back to the Zeus before the end of the mission. The Mission Commander - Mike Goss - orders the Zeus to lift off immediately without waiting for the others, because if they don’t take off before the end of the window, the entire landing team will die. Reluctantly, Shaw and Donner lift off, stranding the other two of their party on Mars to die. One of them - the only female member of the crew - was Donner’s girlfriend.</p>
<p>2247:</p>
<p>It’s the fifth anniversary of the Mars Disaster, and Donner’s in a piss-and-vinegar mood. This is made worse when AJ stupidly corrects him in front of their class. Donner tears in to the guy viciously in front of everyone. Some time later at the Gym, Wassenfelder compliments AJ on his guts for picking a fight with the teacher on a day he knew the guy would be in a bad mood anyway. AJ legitimately didn’t know, and tries to apologize to Donner, explaining that when he worked for an aerospace company, his supervisors insisted that everyone know everything about everything, which is just folly, so the engineers all came up with a code for someone else to jump in when they needed help, but didn’t want to arouse attention - they’d make reference to an “H2IK Sequence,” which he explains means “Hell if I know.” Donner tells him to learn how to shut up. Evram tries to get Donner to talk about it, too, but Donner challenges him to discuss the ‘beauty marks’ on his own back - extensive scaring from the war - and Evram clams up.</p>
<p>That night at the bar (Which I believe is called “Major Tom’s”) the English reporter that Donner will deck 5 years in to the future shows up and asks the Antares Cadets if they’re there for the show. Donner and Shaw are sitting silently at the bar. Goss - now the director of spaceflight - comes in and sits down with them, and delivers an eulogy, then the three of them toast the dead Mars crew members. Goss and Donner leave separately, Shaw stays and drinks. “Prolonged torture disguised as tradition,” the reporter calls it, and the cadets debate why they put up with it. Jen, who’s now knocking boots with Shaw, sidles up to him and gives him some of her annoying free-to-be-you-and-me 1970s handholding talk (To be fair, it’s far less annoying this time out than it usually is) and finishes by telling him she doesn’t think he should be alone tonight. He agrees, grabs a bottle, and leaves her behind at the bar. At Donner’s house, he finds the guy watching Mars Mission tapes of the disaster. “Ok, three things: First, burn that damn disk; second, we’re never toasting again; and third: neither of us are ever going to be alone on the anniversary, ok?”</p>
<p>The next day in class, Donner is teaching and Nadia asks a technical question. Donner flounders for the answer, and lets slip an “H21K Sequence” reference. AJ picks up on this, and jumps in saving Donner and making it look like Donner knew what he was talking about.</p>
<p>2252:</p>
<p>Still en rout to Venus, and several weeks after leaving earth, the Antares starts having massive electrical problems. The lights are flashing, systems go on and off randomly, no one can figure out what it is. They try to pin it down, but they aren’t having any luck. Donner asks for AJ’s help on the ground, but they hem and haw and say he isn’t medically ready, lying, basically, blaming it on a psych eval when in fact Mike Goss just doesn’t want the guy back on the floor. AJ, meanwhile, visits “Major Tom’s,” and ends up unwillingly eating lunch with the annoying British reporter. The reporter mentions electrical problems on the Antares, and AJ attempts to excuse himself and leave, but has a heart attack on his way to the bathroom, a victim of the plaque building up in his heart.</p>
<p>Shaw, meanwhile, has visited Beta three times since the last episode, and every time he sees the same thing - a martian dust storm, and no other information. He has no idea what it means. Nadia hits on Donner, and Zoe gets jealous, but Nadia points out that they’re just sex buddies, and nothing more, and they have been for years. Donner goes EVA to see if anything is conspicuously wrong outside, and finds nothing material, but sees the space suited ghosts of the dead mars astronauts. They fly up from the ship, and he follows, freaking out the live crew of the Antares. Eventually he hears Zoe/Sees his dead girlfriend telling him that she/they need him, and he stops, returns to his senses, and heads back to the ship. He covers for the whole incident by saying he thought he saw a piece fly off and went after it himself.</p>
<p>The Rotator Arm stops spinning, and the living quarters looses spin, as well as heat and electricity. Wassenfelder refuses to leave his cabin. Paula tries to coax him in to it, but he won’t go, so she claims she’s leaving, but she’s really just in her own cabin next door, huddled up trying to keep warm. </p>
<p>Back on earth, AJ is prepped for surgery, and Rollie will have it later in the day. Since the reporter called HQ first, rather than his own producer for a scoop, they give him some more latitude than they normally would. Ultimately, everyone demands AJ be brought in to it, and finally, with no choice but to publicly say he hates the guy, Goss gives in and has the relevant info sent to the guy in the hospital. On a comlink with the ship, he tells Donner that he’s pretty sure it’s an H2IK sequence. Donner doesn’t take that well. Evram, meanwhile, is having flashbacks to “The War” and freaking out, Paula went back over to keep Wassenfelder from freezing to death, and Shaw is seriously looking at an abort back to earth. </p>
<p>They’ve eliminated the possibility of software error, so it has to be physical, it has to be a short, but the ship is incapable of shorts because everything is coated with an insulating polymer. Suddenly, Donner has a flash of inspiration, and turns off their hokey fake gravity system, and pokes around in a Jeffries tube, where he finds a wrench floating around. When the gravity’s on, it falls on the main busses and shorts’ em out.</p>
<p>The day is saved, everyone is happy, and on they go. The crew demand that AJ be returned to ground control permanently, and again, Goss has no choice but to reply. </p>
<p>The End.</p>
<p>OBSERVATIONS</p>
<p>The gravity on the ship is maintained by two spinning sections, but then they’ve got a hokey pseudo artificial gravity system that they use in the non-spinning parts, which they explained is a combination of nanites, magnetic clothes, and electromagnets in the floor. Leaving alone that’s a ludicrous amount of trouble to go through in a ship that’s already partially spinning, and that you really don’t want that number of electromagnets around sensitive electronics and computers, it’s just a goofy idea. It’s a bad doubletalk system to get around the expense of shooting weightless scenes, which is annoying since it could easily have been sidestepped by simply making the whole ship rotate, or making the rotating sections larger a’la the Leonov from 2010 or the Omega Class Destroyers and Explorer Class Ships from Babylon 5. But noooooo.<br />
I asked logically a couple weeks ago why their hair is obviously not floating around, and joked “What? Are they using magnetic shampoo?” Turns out they are! They made a point of mentioning that this episode, and it became a bit of a plot point, actually. Dumber and dumber…</p>
<p>They make mention that the ship is 6 million kilometers from earth, give or take. That means it’s 3,728,227 miles from earth, roughly. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so at that distance it would take communication signals from the Antares a hair over 20 seconds to get to earth, and of course another 20 seconds for the reply to get from the earth to the Antares. All the communications in the show up to and including this episode have been instantaneous, and I think we can safely conclude that the series will ignore any light speed lag in the future.</p>
<p>Why is Beta showing Shaw the Martian storm? Obviously he wants Shaw to confront something from the Mars mission, but what is it? Irritatingly, we intentionally don’t have enough info to make a guess at this point.<br />
Clearly the ghosts of the dead astronauts were Beta screwing around with Donner’s mind again, as with the precognizant dreams earlier on, but why? And was he responsible for the malfunctions? I don’t think so. I think it was a legitimate malfunction that Beta had no control over, but he was trying to tell Donner something, and didn’t have much success. It’s up in the air as to whether Beta was manipulating events to get AJ back on the ground crew or not, though. </p>
<p>I’m increasingly of a mind that the Mars Mission’s purpose was to recover an alien artifact from Mars, and that that artifact was Beta himself. That may not actually be the case, but it’s increasingly seeming like whatever’s going on in the present is inexorably tied up with that disaster. </p>
<p>Donner has only had casual meaningless sex since the Mars disaster, he refuses to get involved with a female astronaut because of how much killing his ex ripped him apart. Nadia knows this, but Zoe never put it together until Nadia pointed it out to her. Nadia also implies that Donner hasn’t been up and running (So to speak) since they left earth. </p>
<p>Paula is fully recovered from the last episode, and more or less admitted to being a Christian in this episode, which is evidently common knowledge among the crew. Wassenfelder kinda’ sorta’ makes fun of her because of this. It’s fairly obvious that Paula and Wassenfelder like each other, but she’s too stubborn and he’s too much of a jackass to do anything about it. </p>
<p>The reporter may not be as big a jackass as we were led to believe in the pilot. He makes it clear that he was once a top-flight reporter who exposed a corrupt politician, but the politician was somehow able to make it appear that the reporter faked the story. As a penalty, he’s been exiled to cover the space program, and he immediately recognizes AJ as an exile of another sort. Though he’s clearly using AJ for his own purposes, he is kind of charming and he does seem to care for the guy, and does seem concerned when he goes under the knife. Also, obviously, he knows the political game at the space center well, and is able to play the game with ease.</p>
<p>Evram’s scars were the result of a war at least six years in the past, probably quite a bit longer than that, though. Judging from the flashbacks, he was in the Israeli army during a big war, presumably with the Arab nations around Israel. We saw him crawling through the rubble of a collapsed building trying to rescue a woman - his wife? Sister? Girlfriend? A total stranger? - and then getting pinned beneath some falling rubble. There’s been allusions to his detoxification in last week’s episode, but tonight we found out that he’s an alcoholic who’s been coping with the trauma of the war - and evidently the pain of his injuries - with booze. Claire, the ground control flight surgeon (Who he calls “Frenchie”) has known this all along, and has been covering for him. He’s been using dermal transfer patches to wean himself off the alcohol, but isn’t fully clear yet. There’s a hint of some romance between them.</p>
<p>And that, my friends, is that. Not the greatest episode they’ve ever done, but I think a bit better than last week, and the Lostbacks were a bit more focused and on-target this time out. I’m glad to see AJ isn’t leaving the cast of the show, though I’m surprised this show’s “Helo,” Rollie, has so little to do.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/reviews">Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/episode-reviews-0">Episode Reviews</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/defying-gravity">Defying Gravity</a></li></ul></section>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:57:19 +0000Republibot 3.0867 at http://www.republibot.com